MOTIVATION TO RESPOND ON STACK OVERFLOW Q&A WEBSITE

Abstract. The importance of using Q&A sites such as Stack Overflow and Code Project, etc. is obvious toeveryone in order to solve the potential problems of the developers. The objective of this research was to increase the participation rate and responsiveness of developers on Stack Overflow website by improving the gamification methods. To present the proposed solution, a tool called Stack Overflow Super Gamification (SSG) was proposed, which is an extension for Eclipse. The purpose of this extension is to create an ongoing competition and motivation among developers to participate in answering questions on Stack Overflow site. In this extension, the ranking practices for active users on the siteare improved so that the continuity of participation in the site will earn more privileges. Also, the ranking structure of the users with various nationalities who have gained privileges was used to create a motivation and competition among the developers of different countries. Rewards for users in this extension, for example, offering superior job opportunities based on higher privileges, as well as providing an opportunity to advertise products or businesses and demonstrate personalabilities and talent for free, will make them more willing to participate, and will provide the incentive to stay active on the site. The proposed solutions will not only provide more activities and answers to more questions, but also bring valuable achievements to developers active on the site. According to the evaluations, the performance of the proposed solution for motivating developers to participate and answer the questions on the Stack Overflow site is acceptable. Since the purpose of this strategy is to encourage developers to participate effectively on the site, the evaluation results clearly reflect theusefulness of this solution in motivating developers. The results indicate that while the developers are actively involved, the number of unanswered questions, as well as unacceptable responses is reduced, and in the meanwhile, the quality of the responses given is acceptable in terms of brevity, completeness, and accuracy.Keywords: Gamification, Motivation on Stack Overflow website, Q&A sites

"It would work for me too": How Online Communities Shape Software Developers' Trust in AI-Powered Code Generation Tools

While revolutionary AI-powered code generation tools have been rising rapidly, we know little about how and how to help software developers form appropriate trust in those AI tools. Through a two-phase formative study, we investigate how online communities shape developers' trust in AI tools and how we can leverage community features to facilitate appropriate user trust. Through interviewing 17 developers, we find that developers collectively make sense of AI tools using the experiences shared by community members and leverage community signals to evaluate AI suggestions. We then surface design opportunities and conduct 11 design probe sessions to explore the design space of using community features to support user trust in AI code generation systems. We synthesize our findings and extend an existing model of user trust in AI technologies with sociotechnical factors. We map out the design considerations for integrating user community into the AI code generation experience

Identifying reputation collectors in community question answering (CQA) sites: Exploring the dark side of social media

YesThis research aims to identify users who are posting as well as encouraging others to post low-quality and duplicate contents on community question answering sites. The good guys called Caretakers and the bad guys called Reputation Collectors are characterised by their behaviour, answering pattern and reputation points. The proposed system is developed and analysed over publicly available Stack Exchange data dump. A graph based methodology is employed to derive the characteristic of Reputation Collectors and Caretakers. Results reveal that Reputation Collectors are primary sources of low-quality answers as well as answers to duplicate questions posted on the site. The Caretakers answer limited questions of challenging nature and fetches maximum reputation against those questions whereas Reputation Collectors answers have so many low-quality and duplicate questions to gain the reputation point. We have developed algorithms to identify the Caretakers and Reputation Collectors of the site. Our analysis finds that 1.05% of Reputation Collectors post 18.88% of low quality answers. This study extends previous research by identifying the Reputation Collectors and 2 how they collect their reputation points

Determinants of quality, latency, and amount of Stack Overflow answers about recent Android APIs.

Stack Overflow is a popular crowdsourced question and answer website for programming-related issues. It is an invaluable resource for software developers; on average, questions posted there get answered in minutes to an hour. Questions about well established topics, e.g., the coercion operator in C++, or the difference between canonical and class names in Java, get asked often in one form or another, and answered very quickly. On the other hand, questions on previously unseen or niche topics take a while to get a good answer. This is particularly the case with questions about current updates to or the introduction of new application programming interfaces (APIs). In a hyper-competitive online market, getting good answers to current programming questions sooner could increase the chances of an app getting released and used. So, can developers anyhow, e.g., hasten the speed to good answers to questions about new APIs? Here, we empirically study Stack Overflow questions pertaining to new Android APIs and their associated answers. We contrast the interest in these questions, their answer quality, and timeliness of their answers to questions about old APIs. We find that Stack Overflow answerers in general prioritize with respect to currentness: questions about new APIs do get more answers, but good quality answers take longer. We also find that incentives in terms of question bounties, if used appropriately, can significantly shorten the time and increase answer quality. Interestingly, no operationalization of bounty amount shows significance in our models. In practice, our findings confirm the value of bounties in enhancing expert participation. In addition, they show that the Stack Overflow style of crowdsourcing, for all its glory in providing answers about established programming knowledge, is less effective with new API questions

E-mentoring in Online Programming Communities : Opportunities, Challenges, Activities and Strategies

Mentoring is known to effectively improve professional development. The advancements in Information Technology area have positively impacted the process of mentoring through a more technology-mediated form of mentoring known as e-mentoring or online mentoring. Online mentoring had a particularly strong effect in improving the learning opportunities in online programming communities where mentees and mentors interact with each other from around the world in a mutually beneficial learning experience and collaboration. Yet, the lack of a coherent understanding of different characteristics (e.g., opportunities, challenges, activities, and strategies employed by mentees and mentors) of e-mentoring in online programming communities and lack of knowledge about mentoring aspects of applying e-mentoring in different types of online programming platforms inhibit us from an informed design or redesign of systems for e-mentoring in such communities. With a specific focus on those shortcomings, this research presents several empirical studies to advance the understanding of e-mentoring in online programming communities. First, we investigate the emerging opportunities and challenges faced by e-mentoring in online programming community. Next, we identify and classify e-mentoring activities carried out in this context. We investigate the strategies employed to overcome e-mentoring challenges in online programming communities. Finally, based on our findings, this dissertation proposes a conceptual framework for augmenting socio-technical systems with e-mentoring. The dissertation also provides comprehensive contributions that enhance the understanding of e-mentoring in online communities and provides improvement recommendations (e.g., encouraging academic members to help by offering their services to online communities as a part of their university work, using chatbots for automated responses to queries, and improving features to manage e-mentoring tasks and projects)

Analysis of community question‐answering issues via machine learning and deep learning: State‐of‐the‐art review

Over the last couple of decades, community question-answering sites (CQAs) have been a topic of much academic interest. Scholars have often leveraged traditional machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) to explore the ever-growing volume of content that CQAs engender. To clarify the current state of the CQA literature that has used ML and DL, this paper reports a systematic literature review. The goal is to summarise and synthesise the major themes of CQA research related to (i) questions, (ii) answers and (iii) users. The final review included 133 articles. Dominant research themes include question quality, answer quality, and expert identification. In terms of dataset, some of the most widely studied platforms include Yahoo! Answers, Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow. The scope of most articles was confined to just one platform with few cross-platform investigations. Articles with ML outnumber those with DL. Nonetheless, the use of DL in CQA research is on an upward trajectory. A number of research directions are proposed

Noodle, Noodle, Cat: Extra-Subjective Agency in Web-based Art practice

This research investigates the complexities of artistic authorship under the production conditions of the web. It is driven by a fascination with the possibilities of expanding the authorial sphere of the artwork to include the productive capacities of other subjectivities, entities and processes. I offer the neologism ‘extra-subjectivity’ to reflect on this emerging form of production, in which the ultimate manifestation of the artwork often exceeds the author’s intentions. As well as the written thesis, it comprises seven artworks that represent a distinctive approach characterized by playfulness, humour and the use of generative computational processes. Several early works explore my authorial agency in relation to algorithmically generated variations of texts, including William Blake’s poem The Fly and the song Puff the Magic Dragon. Later, algorithmic generation is combined with the appropriation of content shared on social media, as in Infinite Violets, which displays variations of a Shakespearean verse along with images from Flickr. I draw on digital sociological methods to create a hybrid approach in which the web is understood as an evolving medium made up of digital objects and devices that can be repurposed for art practice. This approach underpins 'Flickr Nude or Noodle Descending a Staircase', which uses images programmatically accessed through Flickr’s application programming interface to remake a Marcel Duchamp painting for the web. 'Selfie Portrait' displays Instagram photographs tagged with ‘Selfie’ alongside users’ biographical information, which drives the ‘Copyright Episode’, an extended account of the legal contexts surrounding web-based art practices. Here, I demonstrate how such practices are entangled socially, ethically and legally with the distinct production conditions of the web. I argue that authorship is a question of responsibility as well as ‘ownership’, which is why ethics are as important as the law

Retention of Women in Computer Science: Why Women Persist in Their Computer Science Majors

Retention of women through graduation in Computer Science (CS) majors is one of the biggest challenges for CS education. Most research in this area focuses on factors influencing attrition rather than why and how women remain committed. The goal of this research study is to understand retention from the perspective of women who persisted in their CS major. Using the theoretical lens of legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice, I designed and conducted a study that involved focus groups, interviews, journey maps, and experience sampling methods. I found that retention of women in this study was influenced by four different types of interactions and eight different practices inside the CS major. I also found that learning was a matter of multimembership at the intersection of several different communities which supported both these women’s learning and retention. Finally, this dissertation provides a cross-case study narrative that highlights commonalities and differences of different pathways of ongoing participation investigated in this study. Such narrative is illustrated by five individual case studies of five women persisting in their CS major

Advances in Computational Social Science and Social Simulation

Aquesta conferència és la celebració conjunta de la "10th Artificial Economics Conference AE", la "10th Conference of the European Social Simulation Association ESSA" i la "1st Simulating the Past to Understand Human History SPUHH".Conferència organitzada pel Laboratory for Socio­-Historical Dynamics Simulation (LSDS-­UAB) de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.Readers will find results of recent research on computational social science and social simulation economics, management, sociology,and history written by leading experts in the field. SOCIAL SIMULATION (former ESSA) conferences constitute annual events which serve as an international platform for the exchange of ideas and discussion of cutting edge research in the field of social simulations, both from the theoretical as well as applied perspective, and the 2014 edition benefits from the cross-fertilization of three different research communities into one single event. The volume consists of 122 articles, corresponding to most of the contributions to the conferences, in three different formats: short abstracts (presentation of work-in-progress research), posters (presentation of models and results), and full papers (presentation of social simulation research including results and discussion). The compilation is completed with indexing lists to help finding articles by title, author and thematic content. We are convinced that this book will serve interested readers as a useful compendium which presents in a nutshell the most recent advances at the frontiers of computational social sciences and social simulation researc

Examining university student satisfaction and barriers to taking online remote exams

Recent years have seen a surge in the popularity of online exams at universities, due to the greater convenience and flexibility they offer both students and institutions. Driven by the dearth of empirical data on distance learning students' satisfaction levels and the difficulties they face when taking online exams, a survey with 562 students at The Open University (UK) was conducted to gain insights into their experiences with this type of exam. Satisfaction was reported with the environment and exams, while work commitments and technical difficulties presented the greatest barriers. Gender, race and disability were also associated with different levels of satisfaction and barriers. This study adds to the increasing number of studies into online exams, demonstrating how this type of exam can still have a substantial effect on students experienced in online learning systems and technologies