Decomposing Discussion Forums and Boards using User Roles

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Abstract:

Discussion forums are a central part of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 infrastructures. The health and sustainability of forums is depen- dent on the information exchange behaviour of its members. Such behaviour needs to be better understood and characterised so that forums can be better managed, new services delivered and oppor- tunities and risks detected. In this paper, we present a method for analysing user communication roles in discussion forums. We analyse the composition of several forums from a medium-sized national bulletin board in terms of these roles, demonstrating simi- larities between forums based on underlying user behaviour rather than topic. We suggest that analysing the evolution of role com- position is an important step in developing a predictive model of forum health.

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* Clique Industry Partner

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