research-article

mimir: a market-based real-time question and answer service

Authors:

Scott CountsAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '09: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Pages 769 - 778

https://doi.org/10.1145/1518701.1518820

Published: 04 April 2009 Publication History

Abstract

Community-based question and answer (Q&A) systems facilitate information exchange and enable the creation of reusable knowledge repositories. While these systems are growing in usage and are changing how people find and share information, current designs are inefficient, wasting the time and attention of their users. Furthermore, existing systems do not support signaling and screening of joking and non-serious questions. Coupling Q&A services with instant and text messaging for faster questions and answers may exacerbate these issues, causing Q&A services to incur high interruption costs on their users.

In this paper we present the design and evaluation of a market-based real-time Q&A system. We compared its use to a similar Q&A system without a market. We found that while markets can reduce wasted resources by reducing the number of less important questions and low quality answers, it may also reduce the socially conducive questions and usages that are vital to sustaining a Q&A community.

References

[1]

Ackerman, M. S. and Palen, L. 1996. The Zephyr Help Instance: promoting ongoing activity in a CSCW system. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI, pp. 268--275.

Digital Library

[2]

Deci, E. L., Koestner, R.,&Ryan, R. M. 1999. A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 125, pp. 627--668.

[3]

Edelman, B. Earnings and Ratings at Google Answers. 2004. Unpublished Manuscript.

[4]

Google questions need for Google Answers http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9005481&intsrc=hm_list

[5]

Gneezy, U. and Rustichini, A., 2000. Pay Enough Or Don'T Pay At All. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 115(3), pp. 791--810.

[6]

Gneezy, U., and Rustichini, A. A Fine is a Price. 2000 Journal of Legal Studies, vol. XXIX, 1, part 1, pp. 1--18.

[7]

Harper, F. M., Raban, D., Rafaeli, S., and Konstan, J. A. 2008. Predictors of answer quality in online Q&A sites. In Proceeding of the SIGCHI, pp. 865--874.

Digital Library

[8]

Hsieh, G., Kraut, R., Hudson, S.E., Weber, R. 2008. Can Markets Help?: Applying Market Mechanisms to Improve Synchronous Communication. In Proceeding of CSCW. pp. 535--544.

Digital Library

[9]

Janes, J., Hill, C., and Rolfe, A. Ask-an-Expert Services Analysis. 2001. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 52, 13 pp. 1106--1121.

Digital Library

[10]

Kraut, R. E., Fish, R., Root, R.,&Chalfonte, B. 1990. Informal communication in organizations: Form, function, and technology. In Human reactions to technology: Claremont symposium on applied social psychology, pp. 145--199.

[11]

Kraut, R. E., Sunder, S., Telang, R.,&Morris, J. 2005. Pricing electronic mail to solve the problem of spam. Human Computer Interaction, 20, pp. 195--223.

Digital Library

[12]

Leibenluft, J. 2007. A Librarian's Worst Nightmare: Yahoo! Answers, where 120 million users can be wrong. Slate Magazine, Dec. 7, 2007.

[13]

Ling, K., et al. 2005. Using social psychology to motivate contributions to online communities. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(4), article 10.

[14]

Pomerantz, J., Nicholson, S., Belanger, Y., Lankes, R. D. 2004. The Current State of Digital Reference. Information Processing and Management 40, 2, pp. 347--363.

Digital Library

[15]

Rafaeli, S., Raban, D., Ravid, G. 2007. How Social Motivation Enhances Economic Activity and Incentives in the Google Answers Knowledge Sharing Market. International Journal of Knowledge and Learning 3, 1, pp. 1--11.

[16]

Reeves, B., Roy, S., Gorman, B., Morley, T. 2008. A Marketplace for Attention: Responses to Synthetic Currency Used to Signal Information Importance in E-mail. Peer-Reviewed Journal On the Internet. First Monday, Volume 13 Number 5 - 5 May 2008.

[17]

van Zandt, T. (2004). Information Overload in a Network of Targeted Communication. RAND Journal of Economics, 35 (3), 542--560.

[18]

Weisz, J. D., Erickson, T., Kellogg, W. A. 2006. Synchronous broadcast messaging: the use of ICT. In Proceedings of SIGCHI, pp. 1293--1302.

Digital Library

Cited By

A. HASEGAWA AAKIYAMA MYAMASHITA NINOUE DMORI T(2023)Analysis of Non-Experts' Security- and Privacy-Related Questions on a Q&A SiteIEICE Transactions on Information and Systems10.1587/transinf.2022ICP0006E106.D:9(1380-1396)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1587/transinf.2022ICP0006
Anbaraki sJowkar A(2021)Evaluating and Predicting the Quality of Answers Factors in the Research Gate’s Question and Answer System: a Case Study of the Thematic Domain of Knowledge ManagementIranian Journal of Information Processing and Management10.52547/jipm.36.3.70936:3(709-736)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2021
https://doi.org/10.52547/jipm.36.3.709
Li JZheng HDuan X(2021)Factors Influencing the Popularity of a Health-Related Answer on a Chinese Question-and-Answer Website: Case StudyJournal of Medical Internet Research10.2196/2988523:9(e29885)Online publication date: 28-Sep-2021
https://doi.org/10.2196/29885
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

mimir: a market-based real-time question and answer service
1. Information systems

Recommendations

Predictors of answer quality in online Q&A sites
CHI '08: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Question and answer (Q&A) sites such as Yahoo! Answers are places where users ask questions and others answer them. In this paper, we investigate predictors of answer quality through a comparative, controlled field study of responses provided across ...
Why pay?: exploring how financial incentives are used for question & answer
CHI '10: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Electronic commerce has enabled a number of online pay-for-answer services. However, despite commercial interest, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of how financial incentives support question asking and answering. Using 800 questions randomly ...
Why users of yahoo!: answers do not answer questions
CHI '10: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Posing a question to an online question and answer community does not guarantee a response. Significant prior work has explored and identified members' motivations for contributing to communities of collective action (e.g., Yahoo! Answers); in contrast ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CHI '09: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 2009

2426 pages

ISBN:9781605582467

DOI:10.1145/1518701

General Chairs:
Dan R. Olsen
Brigham Young University
,
Richard B. Arthur
Brigham Young University
,
Program Chairs:
Ken Hinckley
Microsoft Research
,
Meredith Ringel Morris
Microsoft Research
,
Scott Hudson
Carnegie Mellon University
,
Saul Greenberg
University of Calgary

Copyright © 2009 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 04 April 2009

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

CHI '09

Sponsor:

CHI '09: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 4 - 9, 2009

MA, Boston, USA

Acceptance Rates

CHI '09 Paper Acceptance Rate 277 of 1,130 submissions, 25%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

Upcoming Conference

CHI 2025

Sponsor:
sigchi

ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 26 - May 1, 2025

Yokohama , Japan

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

48
Total Citations
View Citations
673
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)11
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 16 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

A. HASEGAWA AAKIYAMA MYAMASHITA NINOUE DMORI T(2023)Analysis of Non-Experts' Security- and Privacy-Related Questions on a Q&A SiteIEICE Transactions on Information and Systems10.1587/transinf.2022ICP0006E106.D:9(1380-1396)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1587/transinf.2022ICP0006
Anbaraki sJowkar A(2021)Evaluating and Predicting the Quality of Answers Factors in the Research Gate’s Question and Answer System: a Case Study of the Thematic Domain of Knowledge ManagementIranian Journal of Information Processing and Management10.52547/jipm.36.3.70936:3(709-736)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2021
https://doi.org/10.52547/jipm.36.3.709
Li JZheng HDuan X(2021)Factors Influencing the Popularity of a Health-Related Answer on a Chinese Question-and-Answer Website: Case StudyJournal of Medical Internet Research10.2196/2988523:9(e29885)Online publication date: 28-Sep-2021
https://doi.org/10.2196/29885
Guo CCaine K(2021)Anonymity in Questions and Answers about HealthProceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting10.1177/107118132064115064:1(658-662)Online publication date: 9-Feb-2021
https://doi.org/10.1177/1071181320641150
Liu Z(Chris) Zhao YChen SSong SHansen PZhu Q(2021)Exploring askers’ switching from free to paid social Q&A services: A perspective on the push-pull-mooring frameworkInformation Processing & Management10.1016/j.ipm.2020.10239658:1(102396)Online publication date: Jan-2021
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ipm.2020.102396
Ameri FKeeling KSalehnejad R(2020)You Get What You Pay for on Health Care Question and Answer Platforms: Nonparticipant Observational StudyJournal of Medical Internet Research10.2196/1353422:1(e13534)Online publication date: 15-Jan-2020
https://doi.org/10.2196/13534
Dubois PMaftouni MChilana PMcGrenere JBunt A(2020)Gender Differences in Graphic Design Q&AsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34151844:CSCW2(1-26)Online publication date: 15-Oct-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3415184
Lu YMao XZhou MZhang YWang TLi Z(2020)Haste Makes Waste: An Empirical Study of Fast Answers in Stack Overflow2020 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)10.1109/ICSME46990.2020.00013(23-34)Online publication date: Sep-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME46990.2020.00013
Tang YHew KYuan XQiao C(2020)How social instant messaging questions affect replies: a randomised controlled experimentBehaviour & Information Technology10.1080/0144929X.2020.177732740:16(1727-1740)Online publication date: 9-Jun-2020
https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2020.1777327
Jan SWang CZhang QWang G(2018)Analyzing Payment-Driven Targeted Q8A SystemsACM Transactions on Social Computing10.1145/32814491:3(1-21)Online publication date: 10-Dec-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3281449
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents