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@@ -50,12 +50,11 @@ For each community on StackExchange a ``Meta'' page is offered where members of
\section{State of the Art}
Since the introduction of Web 2.0 and the subsquential spawning of platforms for social interaction, researchers started investigating the emerging communities.
The Social Sciences focus on the interactions of users on various platforms. Community knowledge platforms are of special intrest, for instance, StackExchange \cite{}, Quora \cite{}, Reddit \cite{lin2017better, chandrasekharan2017you}, Yahoo! Answers \cite{bian2008finding}, and Wikipedia \cite{yazdanian2019eliciting}. %TODO add refs
Since the introduction of Web 2.0 and the subsquential spawning of platforms for social interaction, researchers started investigating the emerging online communities. The Social Sciences focus on the interactions of users on various platforms. Community knowledge platforms are of special intrest, for instance, StackExchange \cite{}, Quora \cite{}, Reddit \cite{lin2017better, chandrasekharan2017you}, Yahoo! Answers \cite{bian2008finding}, and Wikipedia \cite{yazdanian2019eliciting}. %TODO add refs
%TODO more text here
All these communities differ in their usage. Wikipedia is a community driven knowledge repository where articles are created and edited collaboratively. Reddit represents a platform for social interaction. Quora, StackExchange and Yahoo! Answers are CQA platforms. On Quora and Yahoo! Answers users can ask any question reguarding any topics whereas on StackExchange users have to post their questions in the appropiate subcommunity, for instance StackOverflow or MathOverflow.
Despite the differences in purpose and manifestation of these communities they are social communities and they have to follow certian laws.
In their book on ''Building successful online communities: Evidence-based social design`` \cite{kraut2012building} Kraut \etal lie out five equally important criteria online platforms have to fullfill in order to thrive. 1) When starting a community has to have a critical mass of users who create content. \cite{mamykina2011design} %TODO add ref to stackoverflow
In their book on ''Building successful online communities: Evidence-based social design`` \cite{kraut2012building} Kraut \etal lie out five equally important criteria online platforms have to fullfill in order to thrive. 1) When starting a community has to have a critical mass of users who create content. StackOverflow already had a critical mass of users from the begining due to StackOverflow team already being experts in the domain \cite{mamykina2011design} and the private beta \cite{atwood2008stack}. Both aspects ensured a strong community core early on.
2) The platform must attract new users to grow as well as to replace leaving users. Depending on the type of the community new users should bring certain skills, for example, programming background in open source software, or extended knowledge on certain domains; or qualities, for example, a certain illness in medical communities. New users also bring the challenge of onboarding with them. They will not be familiar with all the rules and nuances of the community. %TODO add ref
3) The platform should encourage users to commit to the community. Online communities are often based on voluntarity of their users, hence the platform has to ensure users are willing to stay. Most platforms do not have contracts with their users, so users should see benefits for staying with the community. 4) Contribution by users to the community should be encouraged. Content generation and engagment is the backbone of a online community. 5) The community needs regulation to sustain the community. Not every user in a community is interested in the well being of the community. Therefore, every community has to deal with trolls, and inappropiate or even destructive behavior. Rules need to be established and enforced to limit and mitigate the damage malicous users cause.
@@ -73,16 +72,13 @@ All these criteria are heavily intertwined, so for the purposes of this thesis,
\subsection{Onboarding of new users}
The onboarding process is a permanent challenge for online communities. The onboarding process differs from one platform to another. \Citeauthor{slag2015one} \etal investigated why many users on StackOverflow only post once after their registration \cite{slag2015one}. They found that 47\% of all users on StackOverflow posted only once. They suggest that code example quatilty is lower than that of more involved users, which often leads to answers to first improve the question and code instead of answering the stated question. This likely discorages new users from using the site further. Negative feedback instead of constructive feedback is another cause for discontinuation of usage. The StackOverflow staff also conducted their own research on negative feedback of the community \cite{silge2019welcome}. They investigated the comment sections of questions by recruting their staff members to rate a set of comments and they found more than 7\% of the reviewed comments are unwelcoming.
One-day-flies are not unique to StackOverflow. \citeauthor{steinmacher2015social} \etal investigated the social barriers newcomers face when they submit their first contribution to an open source software project \cite{steinmacher2015social}. They based their work on empirical data and interviews and identified serveral social barriers preventing newcomers to place their first contribution to a project. Furthermore, newcomers are often on their own in open source projects hindering them. \citeauthor{yazdanian2019eliciting} \etal found that new contributors on Wikipedia face challanges when editing articles. Wikipedia hosts millions of articles \cite{} %TODO
and new contributors often do not know which articles they could edit and improve. Recommender systems can solve this problem by suggesting articles to edit but they suffer from the cold start problem because they rely on past user activty which is missing for new contributors. \citeauthor{yazdanian2019eliciting} \etal proposed a solution by establishing a framework which automatically creates questionaires to fill this gap. This also helps matching new contributors with more experienced contributors.
\citeauthor{allen2006organizational} showed that the one-time-contributers phenomenon also translates to work places and organizations \cite{allen2006organizational}. They found out that socialization with other members of an organization plays an important role in turnover. The better the socialization within the organization the less likely newcomers are to leave. The socialization process has to be actively persued by the organization.
One-day-flies are not unique to StackOverflow. \citeauthor{steinmacher2015social} \etal investigated the social barriers newcomers face when they submit their first contribution to an open source software project \cite{steinmacher2015social}. They based their work on empirical data and interviews and identified serveral social barriers preventing newcomers to place their first contribution to a project. Furthermore, newcomers are often on their own in open source projects hindering them. \citeauthor{yazdanian2019eliciting} \etal found that new contributors on Wikipedia face challanges when editing articles. Wikipedia hosts millions of articles \cite{sizeofwikipedia} and new contributors often do not know which articles they could edit and improve. Recommender systems can solve this problem by suggesting articles to edit but they suffer from the cold start problem because they rely on past user activty which is missing for new contributors. \citeauthor{yazdanian2019eliciting} \etal proposed a solution by establishing a framework which automatically creates questionaires to fill this gap. This also helps matching new contributors with more experienced contributors.
\citeauthor{allen2006organizational} showed that the one-time-contributers phenomenon also translates to work places and organizations \cite{allen2006organizational}. They found out that socialization with other members of an organization plays an important role in turnover. The better the socialization within the organization the less likely newcomers are to leave. This socialization process has to be actively persued by the organization.
The StackOverflow team acknowledged the one-time-contributors problem \cite{silge2019welcome, hanlon2018stack} and took efforts to make the site more welcoming to new users \cite{friend2018rolling}. They lied out various reasons: Firstly, they send mixed messages whether the site is an expert site or for everyone.
Secondly, they gave to little guidance to new users which resulted in unwelcoming behavior of more integrated users towards the new users. New users do not know all the rules and nuances of communitcation of the communities. An example is that ''Please`` and ''Thank you`` is not well received on the site as they are deemed unneccessary. Also the quality, clearlyness and language quality of the questions of new users is lower than more experienced users which leads to unwelcoming or even toxic answers and comments. Moreover, users who gained moderation tool access could close questions with predefined reasons which are often not meaningful enough for poster of the qustion\cite{hanlon2013war}. Thirdly, marginalized groups, for instance women and people of color \cite{hanlon2018stack, stackoversurvey2019, ford2016paradise}, are more likely to drop out of the community due to unwelcoming behavior from other users \cite{hanlon2018stack}. They feel the site is a elitist and hostile place.
The team suggested several steps to mitigate these problems. Some of these steps include appelling to the users to be more welcoming and forgiving towards new users \cite{spolsky2012kicking, } %TODO
, other steps are geared towards changes to the platfrom itself: The ''Be nice`` policy (code of conduct) was updated with feedback from the community \cite{jaydles2014the}. This includes: new users should not be judged for not knowing all things. Furthermore, the closing reasons were updated to be more meaningful to the poster, and questions that are closed are shown as ''on hold`` instead of ''closed`` for the first 5 days \cite{hanlon2013war}. Furthermore, the team investigates how the comment sections can be improved to lessen the unwelcomingness and hostility and keep the civility up.
The team suggested several steps to mitigate these problems. Some of these steps include appelling to the users to be more welcoming and forgiving towards new users \cite{spolsky2012kicking, hanlon2018stack, silge2019welcome}, other steps are geared towards changes to the platfrom itself: The ''Be nice`` policy (code of conduct) was updated with feedback from the community \cite{jaydles2014the}. This includes: new users should not be judged for not knowing all things. Furthermore, the closing reasons were updated to be more meaningful to the poster, and questions that are closed are shown as ''on hold`` instead of ''closed`` for the first 5 days \cite{hanlon2013war}. Furthermore, the team investigates how the comment sections can be improved to lessen the unwelcomingness and hostility and keep the civility up.
The StackOverflow team partnered with \citeauthor{ford2018we} and implemented the Mentorship Research Project \cite{ford2018we, hanlon2017mentorship}. The project lasted one month and aimed to help newcomers improve their first questions before they are posted publicly. When a user is about to post a question the user is asked whether they want their question to be reviewed. If they confirmed they are forward to a help room with a mentor who is experienced user. The question is then reviewed and the mentor suggests some changes if applicable. These changes may include narrowing the question for more precise answers, adding or adjusting code, or removing of ''Please`` and ''Thank you`` from the question. After the review and editing the question is posted by the user. The authors found that mentored questions are received significantly better by the community than non-mentored questions. The questions also received higher scores and where less likely to be off-topic and poor in quality. Furthermore, newcomers are more comfortable when their question is reviewed by a mentor.
This project does not scale very well as the number of mentors is very limited but it gave the authors an idea on how to persue their goal of increasing the welcomingness of StackExchange. The project is followed up by a ''Ask a question wizard`` to help new user as well as more experienced improve the structure, quality, and clearlyness of their questions \cite{friend2018rolling}.
@@ -131,7 +127,7 @@ Although gaining reputation takes time and effort, users can take certain advant
% DONE Design Lessons from the Fastest Q&A Site in the West \cite{mamykina2011design} understanding SO success, 1) productive competition (gamification reputation), 2) founders were already experts on site the created (ensured success early on, founders involved in community not external), 3) meta page for discussion and voting on features (same mechanics as on SO page)
Complementary to reputatation system StackOverflow also employs a badge system \cite{stackoverflowbadges} to stimulate contributions by users \cite{cavusoglu2015can}. The goal of badges is to keep users engaged with the community \cite{li2012quantifying}. Therefore, badges are often used in a gameification setting where users contribute to the community and are rewarded for their behavior if it alines with the requirements of the badges. Badges are visible in questions and answers as well as the profile page of the user and can by earned by performing certain actions. Badges are often seen as a steering mechanism by reasearchers \cite{yanovsky2019one, kusmierczyk2018causal, anderson2013steering}. Although users want to achieve badges and are therefore steered to perform certain actions, steering also occurs in the reputation system. However, badges allow a wider variety goals, for instance, asking and answering questions, voting on questions and answers, or writing higher quality answers. %TODO maybe write something better
Complementary to reputatation system StackOverflow also employs a badge system \cite{stackoverflowbadges} to stimulate contributions by users \cite{cavusoglu2015can}. The goal of badges is to keep users engaged with the community \cite{li2012quantifying}. Therefore, badges are often used in a gameification setting where users contribute to the community and are rewarded for their behavior if it alines with the requirements of the badges. Badges are visible in questions and answers as well as the profile page of the user and can by earned by performing certain actions. Badges are often seen as a steering mechanism by reasearchers \cite{yanovsky2019one, kusmierczyk2018causal, anderson2013steering}. Although users want to achieve badges and are therefore steered to perform certain actions, steering also occurs in the reputation system. However, badges allow a wider variety goals, for instance, asking and answering questions, voting on questions and answers, or writing higher quality answers.
Badges also work as a motivator for users \cite{anderson2013steering}. Users often put in non-trivial amounts of work and effort to achieve badges and so badges become powerful incentives. However, not all users are equal and therefore do not persue badges in the same way \cite{yanovsky2019one}. Contrary to \cite{anderson2013steering}, \citeauthor{yanovsky2019one} \etal \cite{yanovsky2019one} found that users do not neccessarily increase their activity prior to achieving a badge followed by an immediate decrease in contribution thereafter but users behave differently based on their type of contribution. The authors found users can be categorized into 3 groups: Firstly, some users are not affected at all by the badge system and still contribute a lot to the community. Secondly, users increase their activity to before gaining a badge and keep their level of contribution afterwards. Finally, users increase their activity before achieving a badge and return to their previous level of engagement thereafter.
Different badges also create status classes \cite{immorlica2015social}. The rarer a badge can be earned by users the more unique it is in the community and therefore the badge symbolizes some sort of status. Often rare badges are hard to achieve and take significant effort. For some users, depending on their type, this can be huge motivator.
\citeauthor{kusmierczyk2018causal} \etal found first-time badges play an important role in steering users \cite{kusmierczyk2018causal}. The steering effect only takes place if the benefit to the user is greater than the effort the user has to put into to obtain the badge. If the effot is greater the user will likely not persue the badge and therefore the steering effect will not occur.

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text/bib.bib
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@@ -233,6 +233,12 @@
journal={\url{https://stackoverflow.blog/2012/07/20/kicking-off-the-summer-of-love/}},
year={2012}
}
@article{sizeofwikipedia,
title={Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia},
author={},
journal={\url{hhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia}},
year={2020}
}
@article{jaydles2014the,
title={The NEW new “Be Nice” Policy (“Code of Conduct”) — Updated with your feedback [duplicate]},
author={Jaydles},