Delving into the successes and failures of stack exchange communities

In this day and age, the Internet has become an integral part of our lives. Question and answer (Q&A) networks like Stack Exchange have grown to become major sources of knowledge on the Internet. On the Internet, users devote time into looking for answers to questions they have. Sometimes, these users are able to find these answers and other times they do not, thus wasting their time. If these Q&A networks become more successful, there would be higher chances for these users to find answers to their questions since there will be more information on the Internet. The aim of this study is to understand what factor(s) cause a network to be a success or a failure, therefore, improving the network. In this study, we have analyzed data from such Q&A networks, Stack Exchanges. Through data analysis, we have found a factor that causes most of these networks to become successful. Applying the insights that we obtained, we built a model to group the Stack Exchange groups to successful and unsuccessful networks. Our model has achieved over 71% accuracy in predicting Stack Exchange groups’ success that are at least a year old. These results provide insights on how useful these factors are in determining the success of a Q&A network. The implications of these results will allow us to help these networks to become successful, which will increase the quality of the Internet.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Computer Science

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2017

Author dc:creator

• Agrawal, Ashish

Contributors dc:contributor

• Sundaram, Hari

• Stack exchange
• Question and answer (Q&A) network
• Growth

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2017 Ashish Agrawal

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/97251

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/97251