Effectively managing and leveraging crowdsourced knowledge for software engineering

知识共享平台（如Stack Overflow和GitHub）改变了开发者在互联网上分享和寻求知识的方式。这些平台为软件工程（SE）积累了大量的知识，这些知识是由一个庞大且快速变化的参与者群体（即众包SE知识）贡献的。例如，Stack Overflow已经积累了大量的SE知识（通常包括代码示例以及它们的文本描述）。最近的一项调查显示，61%的开发者每天都在Stack Overflow上寻求帮助，这突显了这种众包SE知识的感知价值。随着众包SE知识的数量迅速增长，管理和利用如此大量的知识是一项挑战。挑战1：由于知识共享平台上生成的信息不断泛滥，知识的组织变得越来越具有挑战性。挑战2：保持如此海量知识的质量需要社区付出巨大的努力。事实上，最近的研究表明，Stack Overflow上的代码示例从各个角度来看都可能是有害的（例如，过时和不安全）。挑战3：不同维度的知识分散在不同的来源（例如，平台），开发人员很难有效地检索和利用这些知识。我的长期研究目标是改进大型SE知识的管理和利用，以支持软件开发和维护。该研究计划旨在解决上述挑战，并有三个短期研究目标（ROs）。RO1：致力于改进众包SE知识活动的组织。我的hqp和我将进行分析，以了解良好的用户感知知识组织的特征，同时提出改进知识组织的技术。RO2：确保众包SE知识的质量。为了维护知识的质量，特别是对于过时和安全性方面的代码示例，我将提出自动化技术来检测过时和不安全的代码示例，并通过利用软件开发历史来推荐解决方案。RO3：有效地利用多样化的SE知识。我将开发用于从各种来源收集和链接SE知识的基础设施，并开发支持SE知识多维搜索的技术。本研究的结果将为改善管理和利用众包的SE知识提供解决方案。它将使加拿大和全世界数以百万计的学习者受益，并显著提高软件质量，降低加拿大公司的软件开发成本。拟议的研究将培养10名高素质人才（HQP），并为他们提供软件工程和数据科学方面的技能，这是学术界和工业界最需要的技能。

Knowledge-sharing platforms (e.g., Stack Overflow and GitHub) have changed how developers share and seek knowledge on the Internet. These platforms accumulate a massive amount of knowledge for Software Engineering (SE) that is contributed by a large and rapidly-changing group of participants (i.e., crowdsourced SE knowledge). For instance, Stack Overflow has accumulated a tremendous amount of SE knowledge (often including code examples, along with their textual description). A recent survey shows that 61% of developers seek help on Stack Overflow daily, which underlines the perceived value of such crowdsourced SE knowledge. As the amount of crowdsourced SE knowledge rapidly grows, managing and leveraging such a massive amount of knowledge is challenging. Challenge 1: The organization of knowledge is becoming challenging due to a continual inundation of generated information on knowledge-sharing platforms. Challenge 2: Maintaining the quality of such an enormous amount of knowledge requires an enormous amount of effort from the community. In fact, recent studies show that code examples on Stack Overflow could be toxic from various perspectives (e.g., being obsolete and insecure). Challenge 3: Different dimensions of knowledge are scattered across different sources (e.g., platforms), it becomes difficult for developers to effectively retrieve and leverage such knowledge. My long-term research goal is to improve the management and leveraging of big SE knowledge to support software development and maintenance. This proposed research program aims to address the above-mentioned challenges and has three short-term research objectives (ROs). RO1: Towards improving the organization of crowdsourced SE knowledge activities. My HQPs and I will conduct analysis to understand the characteristics of a good user-perceived organization for knowledge while proposing techniques to improve the organization of the knowledge. RO2: Ensuring the quality of crowdsourced SE knowledge. To maintain the quality of knowledge, typically for code examples in terms of obsolescence and security, I will propose automated techniques to detect obsolete and insecure code examples, and recommend solutions by leveraging software development history. RO3: Towards effectively leveraging the diverse SE knowledge. I will develop an infrastructure for gathering and linking SE knowledge from various sources and develop techniques for supporting multi-dimensional search for SE knowledge. The outcome of this research will provide solutions towards improving the management and leveraging of crowdsourced SE knowledge. It will benefit millions of learners in Canada and worldwide, and significantly improve software quality and reduce software development costs among Canadian companies. The proposed research will train ten highly qualified personnel (HQP) and prepare them with skills in software engineering and data science, the most in--demand skills in academic and industry settings.