How Many Answers Are Enough? Optimal Number of Answers for Q&A Sites

Fichman, Pnina How Many Answers Are Enough? Optimal Number of Answers for Q&A Sites., 2012 . In Lecture Notes in Computer Science: Proceedings of The 4th International Conference on Social Informatics, Lausanne, Switzerland, December 5-7, 2012. (Submitted) [Conference paper]

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English abstract

With the proliferation of the social web, questions about information quality and optimization attract the attention of IS scholars. Question-answering (QA) sites, such as Yahoo!Answers, have the potential to produce good answers, but at the same time not all answers are good and not all QA sites are alike. When organizations design and plan for the integration of question answering services on their sites, identification of good answers and process optimization become critical. Arguing that ‘given enough answers all questions are answered successfully,’ this paper identifies the optimal number of posts that generate high quality answers. Based on content analysis of Yahoo! Answers’ informational questions (n=174) and their answers (n=1,023), the study found that seven answers per question are ‘enough’ to provide a good answer.

Item type: Conference paper
Keywords: Q&A sites, QA, CQA, optimization, Web 2.0, information quality
Subjects: A. Theoretical and general aspects of libraries and information. > AB. Information theory and library theory.
B. Information use and sociology of information > BG. Information dissemination and diffusion.
C. Users, literacy and reading. > CB. User studies.
H. Information sources, supports, channels. > HP. e-resources.
I. Information treatment for information services > IJ. Reference work.
L. Information technology and library technology > LC. Internet, including WWW.
Depositing user: Amanda Ferrara
Date deposited: 07 Oct 2013 15:43
Last modified: 02 Oct 2014 12:28
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10760/20332

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