Web-based communities have become important places for people
to seek and share expertise. We find that networks in these
communities typically differ in their topology from other online
networks such as the World Wide Web. Systems targeted to
augment web-based communities by automatically identifying
users with expertise, for example, need to adapt to the underlying
interaction dynamics. In this study, we analyze the Java Forum, a
large online help-seeking community, using social network
analysis methods. We test a set of network-based ranking
algorithms, including PageRank and HITS, on this large size
social network in order to identify users with high expertise. We
then use simulations to identify a small number of simple
simulation rules governing the question-answer dynamic in the
network. These simple rules not only replicate the structural
characteristics and algorithm performance on the empirically
observed Java Forum, but also allow us to evaluate how other
algorithms may perform in communities with different
characteristics. We believe this approach will be fruitful for
practical algorithm design and implementation for online
expertise-sharing communities.
%0 Conference Paper
%1 Zhang_2007
%A Zhang, Jun
%A Ackerman, Mark S.
%A Adamic, Lada
%B WWW '07: Proceedings of the 16th international conference on World Wide Web
%C New York, NY, USA
%D 2007
%I ACM Press
%K community expertise
%P 221--230
%R http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1242572.1242603
%T Expertise networks in online communities: structure and algorithms
%U http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1242603&coll=GUIDE&dl=ACM&CFID=21633871&CFTOKEN=81037701
%X Web-based communities have become important places for people
to seek and share expertise. We find that networks in these
communities typically differ in their topology from other online
networks such as the World Wide Web. Systems targeted to
augment web-based communities by automatically identifying
users with expertise, for example, need to adapt to the underlying
interaction dynamics. In this study, we analyze the Java Forum, a
large online help-seeking community, using social network
analysis methods. We test a set of network-based ranking
algorithms, including PageRank and HITS, on this large size
social network in order to identify users with high expertise. We
then use simulations to identify a small number of simple
simulation rules governing the question-answer dynamic in the
network. These simple rules not only replicate the structural
characteristics and algorithm performance on the empirically
observed Java Forum, but also allow us to evaluate how other
algorithms may perform in communities with different
characteristics. We believe this approach will be fruitful for
practical algorithm design and implementation for online
expertise-sharing communities.
%@ 978-1-59593-654-7
@inproceedings{Zhang_2007,
abstract = {Web-based communities have become important places for people
to seek and share expertise. We find that networks in these
communities typically differ in their topology from other online
networks such as the World Wide Web. Systems targeted to
augment web-based communities by automatically identifying
users with expertise, for example, need to adapt to the underlying
interaction dynamics. In this study, we analyze the Java Forum, a
large online help-seeking community, using social network
analysis methods. We test a set of network-based ranking
algorithms, including PageRank and HITS, on this large size
social network in order to identify users with high expertise. We
then use simulations to identify a small number of simple
simulation rules governing the question-answer dynamic in the
network. These simple rules not only replicate the structural
characteristics and algorithm performance on the empirically
observed Java Forum, but also allow us to evaluate how other
algorithms may perform in communities with different
characteristics. We believe this approach will be fruitful for
practical algorithm design and implementation for online
expertise-sharing communities.},
added-at = {2007-07-30T17:24:47.000+0200},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
author = {Zhang, Jun and Ackerman, Mark S. and Adamic, Lada},
biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/2fd1f9922d96f6920f93e3f306ffdf519/tobold},
booktitle = {WWW '07: Proceedings of the 16th international conference on World Wide Web},
description = {Expertise networks in online communities},
doi = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1242572.1242603},
interhash = {e606f9c93602096c1c154d9ccfafe0d4},
intrahash = {fd1f9922d96f6920f93e3f306ffdf519},
isbn = {978-1-59593-654-7},
keywords = {community expertise},
location = {Banff, Alberta, Canada},
pages = {221--230},
publisher = {ACM Press},
timestamp = {2008-03-05T12:02:09.000+0100},
title = {Expertise networks in online communities: structure and algorithms},
url = {http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1242603&coll=GUIDE&dl=ACM&CFID=21633871&CFTOKEN=81037701},
year = 2007
}