The path to success: A study of user behaviour and success criteria in online communities

Research output: Chapter in Book or Conference Publication/ProceedingConference Publicationpeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Maintaining online communities is vital in order to increase and retain their economic and social value. That is why community managers look to gauge the success of their communities by measuring a variety of user behaviour, such as member activity, turnover and interaction. However, such communities vary widely in their purpose, implementation and user demographics, and although many success indicators have been proposed in the literature, we will show that there is no one-fits-All approach to community success: Different success criteria depend on different user behaviour. To demonstrate this, we put together a set of user behaviour features, including many that have been used in the literature as indicators of success, and then we define and predict community success in three different types of online communities: Questions & Answers (Q&A), Healthcare and Emotional Support (Life & Health), and Encyclopaedic Knowledge Creation. The results show that it is feasible to relate community success to specific user behaviour with an accuracy of 0.67-0.93 F1 score and 0.77-1.0 AUC.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2017 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence, WI 2017
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages219-226
Number of pages8
ISBN (Electronic)9781450349512
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 23 Aug 2017
Event16th IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence, WI 2017 - Leipzig, Germany
Duration: 23 Aug 201726 Aug 2017

Publication series

NameProceedings - 2017 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence, WI 2017

Conference

Conference16th IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence, WI 2017
Country/TerritoryGermany
CityLeipzig
Period23/08/1726/08/17

Keywords

  • Community success
  • Online communities
  • User behaviour

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