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Social question answering (SQA) services are a popular way for people to exchange information. Unfortunately, the quality of information exchanged can be variable and few studies focus on the quality of questions asked. To address this, we explored the influence of textual features on question quality based on 126 questions taken from five different categories of Yahoo! Answers labeled as “Bad” by...
Online question answering (Q&A) provides a popular platform for people to interact with information online, both by asking and answering questions. Although previous studies have focused on factors that motivate answerers, these studies have not considered that questions offering potential rewards to answerers might provide extrinsic motivation to answer it. In the current study, we collected...
Social question‐answering (SQA) allows people to ask questions in natural language and receive answers from others. While research on SQA has focused on the quality of answers provided with implications for system‐based interventions, few studies have examined whether the questions asked to elicit these answers accurately depict an asker's information need. To address this gap, the current study explores...
Research design is a vital consideration when embarking on any research venture. The careful selection of method (or combination of methods) and project design are integral to obtaining funding, completing a successful study, and having your research accepted for presentation and publication. This panel adopts a format similar to the Antiques Roadshow to focus on research design, with interactive...
Emotions and other affective processes have long been considered a key component in people's life. Despite research conducted in several research domains, little is known about the role of emotions in the information seeking process of both individuals and teams. This poster presents preliminary results from a pilot study conducted in order to evaluate design decisions, experimental protocol, tasks,...
Although online Q&A services have increased in popularity, the field lacks a comprehensive typology to classify different kinds of services into model types. This poster categorizes online Q&A services into four model types – community‐based, collaborative, expert‐based, and social. Drawing such a distinction between online Q&A models provides an overview for how these different types...
Traditional recommendation systems suggest results based on data collected from users' actions. Many of the newer information retrieval (IR) systems incorporate social search or collective search signals as an extension to standard term‐based retrieval algorithms. Systems based on social or collaborative search methods, however, do not consider when, how, and to what extent such support could help...
While search behavior using dynamic query suggestions is understudied, it is virtually non‐existent for dynamic search results (as currently experienced with Google Instant). We report results from a controlled lab study aimed at exploring the effects of these recent search interface developments – dynamic query suggestions and dynamic search results – on users' search behaviors. Based on the availability...
Online question‐answering (Q&A) services are becoming increasingly popular among information seekers. While online Q&A services encompass both virtual reference service (VRS) and social Q&A (SQA), SQA services, such as Yahoo! Answers and WikiAnswers, have experienced more success in reaching out to the masses and leveraging subsequent participation. However, the large volume of content...
This paper presents a preliminary analysis of online information services that examines the intersection of two areas of research: Virtual Reference Services (VRS) and Social Q&A (SQA). This project embraces the idea of a synergic collaboration within and between VRS and SQA to provide higher quality content to information seekers and a higher level of sustainability. Preliminary findings are...
Collaboration takes place at different time‐space conditions. Past research has shown that these two dimensions may have different implications in the collaboration process, as well as on its outcomes, depending upon the task being performed. In collaborative information seeking (CIS), as a relatively new topic in information science, little is known about the effects of different temporal‐spatial...
In this demo we introduce Coagmento, a tool for supporting interactive information seeking process of teams in various collaborative scenarios. Coagmento has been used in several laboratory and field studies to understand issues related to collaborative information seeking (CIS) and deriving lessons and guidelines for providing suitable support for people working in collaboration for information‐intensive...
Online question‐answering (Q&A) services are becoming increasingly popular among information seekers. We divide them in two domains: social Q&A (SQA) and virtual referencing (VR) and ask what the demands and expectations are for both in satisfying information seeking needs. Using more than 30 interviews and their qualitative analysis of both experts (librarians) and end users (students), we...
Creating and defining an online persona is something most Millennials will find themselves doing as they transition into adulthood. Today having an online profile is almost essential to fully network with friends, family, and employers. Despite the popularity of this technology amongst teenagers, not a lot is understood in terms of their privacy behaviors or attitudes regarding privacy within social...
It is commonly expected that collaborative work will lead to better results than working individually. It has been demonstrated by some that teamwork is more than adding together the product of individual work, though this may depend on various factors such as time, space, the tasks or activities nature, as well as team members' personalities. To date, little is known about the specific elements that...
Virtual reference (VR) and social Q&A (SQA), both refer to some form of information seeking activity using online Q&A. They are often seen as apples and oranges, but there is a need to understand their similarities and differences in order to derive lessons from each side to help the other. The proposed panel will bring together prominent researchers from both service types to discuss how...
Many theories and models exist for understanding and explaining information seeking processes (ISP) for individuals. Such is not the case for collaborative information seeking (CIS), despite its growing importance. In this paper we take Kuhlthau's ISP model, designed for individual information seeking, and map it to a CIS situation. We present a laboratory study with 84 participants in 42 pairs and...
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