Publication Type

Conference Proceeding Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

5-2011

Abstract

Question and Answer (Q&A) websites, such as Stack Overflow, use social media to facilitate knowledge exchange between programmers and fill archives with millions of entries that contribute to the body of knowledge in software development. Understanding the role of Q&A websites in the documentation landscape will enable us to make recommendations on how individuals and companies can leverage this knowledge effectively. In this paper, we analyze data from Stack Overflow to categorize the kinds of questions that are asked, and to explore which questions are answered well and which ones remain unanswered. Our preliminary findings indicate that Q&A websites are particularly effective at code reviews and conceptual questions. We pose research questions and suggest future work to explore the motivations of programmers that contribute to Q&A websites, and to understand the implications of turning Q&A exchanges into technical mini-blogs through the editing of questions and answers.

Keywords

q&a; questions, social media, stack overflow

Discipline

Software Engineering

Research Areas

Software and Cyber-Physical Systems

Publication

ICSE '11: Proceedings of the 33rd International Conference on Software Engineering, Waikkiki, Honolulu, Hawaii, 2011 May 21-28

First Page

804

Last Page

807

ISBN

9781450304450

Identifier

10.1145/1985793.1985907

Publisher

ACM

City or Country

New York

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1145/1985793.1985907

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