HCC-Small: Understanding and Supporting Online Question-Answering Sites

在线问答网站（简称问答网站）是社区创建的内容领域中一个新的快速增长的部分。从韩国的Knowledge iN到美国的微软Live QnA，Yahoo！在全球26个国家的答案，用户涌向网站，他们可以张贴问题，并获得答案。哇哦！仅Answers每月就吸引了约1800万独立访问者，自2005年推出以来已积累了超过4亿个答案。这些网站不仅满足了个人对信息的需求，它们生成的内容也是在线搜索和知识发现的重要来源。然而，随便浏览任何一个网站都会发现信号中有明显的噪声。太多的问题得到了讽刺甚至侮辱性的回答。用户往往会重新提出一个问题，而不是在已经提出的答案中找到价值，因为问答网站的急剧增长是最近才出现的，几乎没有机会对它们作为一种新的信息资源和新型社交空间进行实证研究。该项目使用各种观察和实验方法来研究五个问答网站，以了解用户如何在这些网站中进行交互，同时开发工具来帮助用户更好地实现他们的目标。具体而言，该项目将：1。确定问答网站上提出的问题中影响响应特征（如数量，质量和及时性）的结构或属性;并探索使用模板，评论家和机器人来帮助提问者获得更好的回答; 2.）识别响应线程中暗示高失败风险的结构或属性;并探索使用机器人来干预和“拯救”脱轨的问答线程; 3.）了解问答网站参与者的生命周期，包括他们在网站上的社交互动;并开发工具，以帮助支持用户融入在线问答社区。鉴于其作为信息资源和社会现象的重要性，了解在线问答网站本身具有智力价值，此外：这项工作推进了在线和计算机介导的通信研究的重要路线，帮助修辞和通信专家为设计更有效的在线通信工具做出了贡献。这也将是第一个从社会和信息资源的角度研究在线问答的工作，使新的洞察力在线自愿知识创造的性质。更广泛的影响：在线问答网站已经成为个人和企业的信息和建议的重要来源，以及网络搜索引擎的内容的重要来源。通过了解这些网站并开发工具来支持它们的持续成功运营，我们将帮助问答社区设计师了解既可以促进用户有益的社交体验，又可以构建有价值的社区贡献知识库的方法。

Online Question-Answering Sites (Q&A sites, for short) are a new and rapidly growing piece of the community-created content landscape. From Knowledge iN in South Korea to Microsoft's Live QnA in the U.S., to Yahoo! Answers in 26 countries world-wide, users are flocking to sites where they can post questions and get answers. Yahoo! Answers alone attracts about 18 million unique visitors monthly and has accumulated over 400 million answers since its launch in 2005. Not only do these sites meet individual needs for information, the content they generate is an important source for online search and knowledge discovery. However, a casual browse through any one site reveals significant noise in the signal. Too many questions receive sarcastic or even insulting answers. Too often, it seems, users re-ask a question rather than finding value in the answers already posed.Because the dramatic growth of Q&A sites is so recent, there has been little opportunity to empirically investigate them as a new information resource and as a new type of social space. This project examines five Q&A sites using a variety of observational and experimental methods to gain an understanding of how users interact in and with these sites while also developing tools to help users better meet their goals. Specifically, this project will: 1.) identify structures or properties in questions posed on Q&A sites that affect response characteristics such as quantity, quality, and timeliness; and explore the use of templates, critics, and bots to help question-askers obtain better responses; 2.) identify structures or properties in response threads that suggest high risk of failure; and explore the use of bots to intervene and "rescue" derailed Q&A threads; 3.) understand the lifecycle of Q&A site participants, including their social interaction on the sites; and develop tools to help support user integration into online Q&A communities.Given their importance as an information resource and social phenomenon, understanding online Q&A sites has intellectual merit in its own right, in addition: this work advances an important line of research on online and computer-mediated communications that has helped rhetoric and communications experts contribute to the design of more effective online communication tools. It will also be the first work to study online Q&A from both a social and an information resource perspective, giving new insight into the nature of online voluntary knowledge creation.Broader Impacts: Online question-answering sites have become an important source of information and advice for individuals and businesses, as well as an important source of content for web search engines. By understanding these sites and developing tools to support their continued successful operation, we will help Q&A community designers understand approaches that can both promote beneficial social experiences for users and the construction of valuable community-contributed repositories of knowledge.