A survey on mining stack overflow: question and answering (Q&A) community. (3rd April 2018)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- A survey on mining stack overflow: question and answering (Q&A) community. (3rd April 2018)
- Main Title:
- A survey on mining stack overflow: question and answering (Q&A) community
- Authors:
- Ahmad, Arshad
Feng, Chong
Ge, Shi
Yousif, Abdallah - Abstract:
- Abstract : Purpose: Software developers extensively use stack overflow (SO) for knowledge sharing on software development. Thus, software engineering researchers have started mining the structured/unstructured data present in certain software repositories including the Q&A software developer community SO, with the aim to improve software development. The purpose of this paper is show that how academics/practitioners can get benefit from the valuable user-generated content shared on various online social networks, specifically from Q&A community SO for software development. Design/methodology/approach: A comprehensive literature review was conducted and 166 research papers on SO were categorized about software development from the inception of SO till June 2016. Findings: Most of the studies revolve around a limited number of software development tasks; approximately 70 percent of the papers used millions of posts data, applied basic machine learning methods, and conducted investigations semi-automatically and quantitative studies. Thus, future research should focus on the overcoming existing identified challenges and gaps. Practical implications: The work on SO is classified into two main categories; "SO design and usage" and "SO content applications." These categories not only give insights to Q&A forum providers about the shortcomings in design and usage of such forums but also provide ways to overcome them in future. It also enables software developers to exploit suchAbstract : Purpose: Software developers extensively use stack overflow (SO) for knowledge sharing on software development. Thus, software engineering researchers have started mining the structured/unstructured data present in certain software repositories including the Q&A software developer community SO, with the aim to improve software development. The purpose of this paper is show that how academics/practitioners can get benefit from the valuable user-generated content shared on various online social networks, specifically from Q&A community SO for software development. Design/methodology/approach: A comprehensive literature review was conducted and 166 research papers on SO were categorized about software development from the inception of SO till June 2016. Findings: Most of the studies revolve around a limited number of software development tasks; approximately 70 percent of the papers used millions of posts data, applied basic machine learning methods, and conducted investigations semi-automatically and quantitative studies. Thus, future research should focus on the overcoming existing identified challenges and gaps. Practical implications: The work on SO is classified into two main categories; "SO design and usage" and "SO content applications." These categories not only give insights to Q&A forum providers about the shortcomings in design and usage of such forums but also provide ways to overcome them in future. It also enables software developers to exploit such forums for the identified under-utilized tasks of software development. Originality/value: The study is the first of its kind to explore the work on SO about software development and makes an original contribution by presenting a comprehensive review, design/usage shortcomings of Q&A sites, and future research challenges. … (more)
- Is Part Of:
- Data technologies and applications. Volume 52:Number 2(2018)
- Journal:
- Data technologies and applications
- Issue:
- Volume 52:Number 2(2018)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 52, Issue 2 (2018)
- Year:
- 2018
- Volume:
- 52
- Issue:
- 2
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2018-0052-0002-0000
- Page Start:
- 190
- Page End:
- 247
- Publication Date:
- 2018-04-03
- Subjects:
- Mining -- Software development -- Information retrieval -- Text mining -- Software repositories -- Stack overflow
Information science -- Periodicals
Electronic information resources -- Periodicals
Knowledge management -- Periodicals
020.5 - Journal URLs:
- http://www.emeraldinsight.com/loi/dta ↗
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/ ↗ - DOI:
- 10.1108/DTA-07-2017-0054 ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 2514-9288
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - BLDSS-3PM
British Library HMNTS - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 6206.xml