HCC: Small: Experiments in Community Q&A

在线社区问答系统，如雅虎！答案提供了一个场所，人们可以提出问题，提供答案，浏览和评论两者。这类网站现在是各种网站在线互动的中心部分，包括软件开发、税务准备和产品支持的专门网站。在这个项目中，PI将实验性地回答一组从不同的研究文献中提取的关于如何提高问答系统性能的因果问题&，特别是什么导致人们提供高质量的答案（和问题），如何路由问题，使他们回答最好的成员，如何转介和配置文件影响的问题和答案，以及不同类型的激励措施在多大程度上影响网站上的行为。拟议中的研究很重要，因为在线问答系统已经成为个人和企业获取信息和建议的重要来源，这是企业帮助客户相互支持的一种重要而经济的方式，也是网络搜索引擎的重要内容来源。通过了解这些系统，建立使用模型和测试设计，以支持其改进的操作，该项目将帮助系统设计人员了解可以促进用户有益的社会体验的方法，并为建设有价值的社区贡献的知识库提供信息。其他好处包括为其他研究人员发布数据集和培训学生研究人员。

Online community question-and-answer systems such as Yahoo! Answers provide a venue where people can pose questions, provide answers and browse and comment on both. Such sites are now a central part of online interaction on a wide range of sites, including specialized sites for software development, tax preparation, and product support. In this projects, the PIs will experimentally answer a set of causal questions drawn from diverse research literatures about how to improve the performance of Q&A systems, specifically what leads people to provide good quality answers (and questions), how to route questions so they are answered by the best possible member, how referrals and profiles affect questions and answers, and to what extent different kinds of incentives affect behavior on the site.The proposed research is important because online question and answer systems have become an important source of information and advice for individuals and businesses, an important and economical way for businesses to help their customers support each other, as well as an important source of content for web search engines. By understanding these systems, building models of usage and testing designs to support their improved operation, the project will help systems designers understand approaches that can promote beneficial social experiences for users and that can inform the construction of valuable community-contributed repositories of knowledge. Additional benefits include the release of data sets for other researchers and the training of student researchers.