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Defense: Knowledge Sharing and Yahoo Answers: Everyone Knows Something

Defense: Knowledge Sharing and Yahoo Answers: Everyone Knows Something. L. A. Adamic, et al. Why study Knowledge Sharing?. It is a rising method of communication (YA, Wikipedia) It differs from the classic model of a few authoritative sources

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Defense: Knowledge Sharing and Yahoo Answers: Everyone Knows Something

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  1. Defense: Knowledge Sharing and Yahoo Answers: Everyone Knows Something L. A. Adamic, et al.

  2. Why study Knowledge Sharing? • It is a rising method of communication (YA, Wikipedia) • It differs from the classic model of a few authoritative sources • Current implementations differ from the traditional forum format • Opportunity to study interaction between people (always useful!)

  3. …but is it social networking? • Yes! • There are regular users • Often have reused identities • Can become familiar with each other • Form networks of those who ask and those who answer • Most importantly: • It is real people communicating, sharing ideas, etc.

  4. Why Yahoo! Answers? • The largest English language question-answer site • Broad audience • Avoids bias of more specific purpose sites • Covers many topics • Provides a non-standard social networking methodology • Does not allow traditional forum style

  5. Cluster Analysis • Classify question categories by • Thread length • Asker/replier overlap • Content length

  6. Cluster Analysis • Provides a clear breakdown of categories of questions • Directly acknowledges the issue of the content of the questions • A good starting point, raises further questions about the nature of YA • Who is asking? • Are they the same people asking in each category?

  7. Degree Distributions • Form graph by connecting users who ask to users who answer

  8. Ego Networks • Shows connectedness of neighbors • In general, discussion topics are more connected • Larger strongly connected components • Factual answer topics are less connected • People who ask, aren’t answering • In fact, are less connected than a random graph of this size

  9. Motif Analysis • Provides a further sense of “who responds to who” • Further indicates differences between categories

  10. Network Structure Analysis • Provides insight into the structure of the network • How information flows in different categories under the same umbrella format • Could tailor the design of similar sites to the nature of the topics • Optimize sharing information of certain types

  11. Network Structure Analysis • Provides strong indicators of the nature of user interaction • How is a given user going to use this service? • Ex: Discussion based have most mutual edges, perhaps better suited towards different model

  12. Expertise • Analyzed 100 random selections from programming section • Rated 1-5 (1 basic, 5 “pro”) • Found that only 1% was above a level 3

  13. Expertise • Admittedly not a definitive sample! • Still an important hint about nature of YA • The questions seem shallow because they likely are • The fact that much of the information may be trivial is unimportant • Still an important topic to look into

  14. User Entropy • Analyzed the distribution of answers from users across categories • Generally well spread out • Some users are very focused, very low entropy • But a high number have very high entropy, ask and answer many questions

  15. Entropy Analysis • Emphasizes the breadth of YA • Many people are interested in many topics • Suggests the strengths of having a general site instead of something more tightly focused • As pointed out, this may be at the sacrifice of depth • Again, helps to build a user profile • Who is using this service? And for what?

  16. Best Answers • YA allows the asker to pick a best answer, or other users to vote • Found: • People seem to like longer answers • No correlation between entropy across all categories and overall percentage of best answers (but some for top-level categories looking for expertise) • Reply length, track record good indicators

  17. Best Answers • Provides a sense of what other users take to be most insightful • An important issue in Knowledge Sharing • In categories where applicable, raises question of correlation with the actual best answer • Another element not found in traditional forum

  18. Best Answers • Provides an analysis of the Best Answer in terms of the category type • Compare to E. Agichtein, et al. Finding High-Quality Content in Social Media, WDSM’08, 2008 which focuses on the answer quality

  19. So why was all this good? • Provides a first look at diverse, large scale question-answer network • Not attempting to delve into the intricacies of Yahoo! Answers • Acknowledges a number of issues that arise in such a model (Breadth vs. Depth) • High school homework problems • Provides a more well defined picture of structures and user interactions

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