Can Dynamic Knowledge-Sharing Activities Be Mirrored From the Static Online Social Network in Yahoo! Answers and How to Improve Its Quality of Service?

Yahoo! Answers is an online platform where users can post questions and answer other users' questions. Our previous work studied the online social network (OSN) of Yahoo! Answers by analyzing information from the profiles (including fans, contacts, and interests) of top contributors and their related users. Rather than using the static profile information from the top-contributor-centered dataset, in this paper, we particularly analyze the actual questioning and answering (Q/A) behaviors of normal users. We build a Q/A network that unidirectionally connects each asker to his/her answerers. We analyze the structural characteristics of the Q/A network, user Q/A activities, and knowledge base of all users. In addition to the observations similar to our previous study, which indicates that the OSN of Yahoo! Answers can reflect user Q/A activities to a certain extent, we additionally observe that: 1) a large portion of users only ask questions without answering others' questions; 2) users are active in more knowledge categories than those indicated in their profiles; and 3) the knowledge categories of the top-contributor-related users cannot represent those of normal users. Finally, we analyze the characteristics of questions and answers in different knowledge categories. This paper not only provides an understanding of actual Q/A activities of users but also showcases the aspects of Q/A activities that the OSN of Yahoo! Answers can and cannot accurately reflect. Based on the insights gained from this paper, we propose a few methods to help improve the quality of service of Yahoo! Answers.