Knowledge sharing and yahoo answers

TLDR

Yahoo Answers is a large, diverse question‑answer forum that serves as a medium for sharing technical knowledge, seeking advice, gathering opinions, and satisfying curiosity about countless topics. The study aims to understand Yahoo Answers’ knowledge‑sharing and activity patterns and to predict, within a category, whether an answer will be chosen as the best answer by the asker. The authors analyze forum categories, cluster them by content and interaction patterns, map related categories, characterize user interest entropy, and combine user attributes with answer characteristics to predict best answer selection. The study finds that some categories resemble expertise forums while others are more discussion‑oriented; users range from narrowly focused to cross‑category participants; and lower user interest entropy correlates with higher answer ratings only in factual‑expertise categories.

Abstract

Yahoo Answers (YA) is a large and diverse question-answer forum, acting not only as a medium for sharing technical knowledge, but as a place where one can seek advice, gather opinions, and satisfy one's curiosity about a countless number of things. In this paper, we seek to understand YA's knowledge sharing and activity. We analyze the forum categories and cluster them according to content characteristics and patterns of interaction among the users. While interactions in some categories resemble expertise sharing forums, others incorporate discussion, everyday advice, and support. With such a diversity of categories in which one can participate, we find that some users focus narrowly on specific topics, while others participate across categories. This not only allows us to map related categories, but to characterize the entropy of the users' interests. We find that lower entropy correlates with receiving higher answer ratings, but only for categories where factual expertise is primarily sought after. We combine both user attributes and answer characteristics to predict, within a given category, whether a particular answer will be chosen as the best answer by the asker.