An exploratory study on the repeatedly shared external links on Stack Overflow

On Stack Overflow, users reuse 11,926,354 external links to share the resources hosted outside the Stack Overflow website. The external links connect to the existing programming-related knowledge and extend the crowdsourced knowledge on Stack Overflow. Some of the external links, so-called as repeat...

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Main Authors: LIU, Jiakun, ZHANG, Haoxiang, XIA, Xin, LO, David, ZOU, Ying, HASSAN, Ahmed E., LI, Shanping
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Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2022
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Online Access:https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/6925
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/7928/viewcontent/RepeatedlySharedExtLinks_av.pdf
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spelling sg-smu-ink.sis_research-79282022-02-17T16:56:36Z An exploratory study on the repeatedly shared external links on Stack Overflow LIU, Jiakun ZHANG, Haoxiang XIA, Xin LO, David ZOU, Ying HASSAN, Ahmed E. LI, Shanping On Stack Overflow, users reuse 11,926,354 external links to share the resources hosted outside the Stack Overflow website. The external links connect to the existing programming-related knowledge and extend the crowdsourced knowledge on Stack Overflow. Some of the external links, so-called as repeated external links, can be shared for multiple times. We observe that 82.5% of the link sharing activities (i.e., sharing links in any question, answer, or comment) on Stack Overflow share external resources, and 57.0% of the occurrences of the external links are sharing the repeated external links. However, it is still unclear what types of external resources are repeatedly shared. To help users manage their knowledge, we wish to investigate the characteristics of the repeated external links in knowledge sharing on Stack Overflow. In this paper, we analyze the repeated external links on Stack Overflow. We observe that external links that point to the text resources (hosted in documentation websites, tutorial websites, etc.) are repeatedly shared the most. We observe that different users repeatedly share the same knowledge in the form of repeated external links, thus increasing the maintenance effort of knowledge (e.g., update invalid links in multiple posts). The repeated external links can bring risks to the software engineering process, as 1) the same users can repeatedly share the external links for the purpose of promotion, and 2) external links can point to webpages with an overload of information that makes it difficult for users to retrieve relevant information. Our findings provide insights to Stack Overflow moderators and researchers. For example, we encourage Stack Overflow to centrally manage the commonly occurring knowledge in the form of repeated external links in order to better maintain the crowdsourced knowledge on Stack Overflow. 2022-01-01T08:00:00Z text application/pdf https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/6925 info:doi/10.1007/s10664-021-10028-y https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/7928/viewcontent/RepeatedlySharedExtLinks_av.pdf http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems eng Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University External link Knowledge sharing Stack overflow Software Engineering
institution Singapore Management University
building SMU Libraries
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider SMU Libraries
collection InK@SMU
language English
topic External link
Knowledge sharing
Stack overflow
Software Engineering
spellingShingle External link
Knowledge sharing
Stack overflow
Software Engineering
LIU, Jiakun
ZHANG, Haoxiang
XIA, Xin
LO, David
ZOU, Ying
HASSAN, Ahmed E.
LI, Shanping
An exploratory study on the repeatedly shared external links on Stack Overflow
description On Stack Overflow, users reuse 11,926,354 external links to share the resources hosted outside the Stack Overflow website. The external links connect to the existing programming-related knowledge and extend the crowdsourced knowledge on Stack Overflow. Some of the external links, so-called as repeated external links, can be shared for multiple times. We observe that 82.5% of the link sharing activities (i.e., sharing links in any question, answer, or comment) on Stack Overflow share external resources, and 57.0% of the occurrences of the external links are sharing the repeated external links. However, it is still unclear what types of external resources are repeatedly shared. To help users manage their knowledge, we wish to investigate the characteristics of the repeated external links in knowledge sharing on Stack Overflow. In this paper, we analyze the repeated external links on Stack Overflow. We observe that external links that point to the text resources (hosted in documentation websites, tutorial websites, etc.) are repeatedly shared the most. We observe that different users repeatedly share the same knowledge in the form of repeated external links, thus increasing the maintenance effort of knowledge (e.g., update invalid links in multiple posts). The repeated external links can bring risks to the software engineering process, as 1) the same users can repeatedly share the external links for the purpose of promotion, and 2) external links can point to webpages with an overload of information that makes it difficult for users to retrieve relevant information. Our findings provide insights to Stack Overflow moderators and researchers. For example, we encourage Stack Overflow to centrally manage the commonly occurring knowledge in the form of repeated external links in order to better maintain the crowdsourced knowledge on Stack Overflow.
format text
author LIU, Jiakun
ZHANG, Haoxiang
XIA, Xin
LO, David
ZOU, Ying
HASSAN, Ahmed E.
LI, Shanping
author_facet LIU, Jiakun
ZHANG, Haoxiang
XIA, Xin
LO, David
ZOU, Ying
HASSAN, Ahmed E.
LI, Shanping
author_sort LIU, Jiakun
title An exploratory study on the repeatedly shared external links on Stack Overflow
title_short An exploratory study on the repeatedly shared external links on Stack Overflow
title_full An exploratory study on the repeatedly shared external links on Stack Overflow
title_fullStr An exploratory study on the repeatedly shared external links on Stack Overflow
title_full_unstemmed An exploratory study on the repeatedly shared external links on Stack Overflow
title_sort exploratory study on the repeatedly shared external links on stack overflow
publisher Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University
publishDate 2022
url https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/6925
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/7928/viewcontent/RepeatedlySharedExtLinks_av.pdf
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