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Suboptimal code is prevalent in software systems. Developers often write low-quality code due to factors like technical knowledge gaps, insufficient experience, time pressure, management decisions, or personal factors. Once integrated, the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-11-11 In-on Wiratsin , Chaiyong Ragkhitwetsagul , Matheus Paixao , Denis De Sousa , Pongpop Lapvikai , Peter Haddawy

Generalized reciprocity -- the tendency to help others after receiving help oneself -- is widely theorized as a mechanism sustaining cooperation on online knowledge-sharing platforms. Yet robust empirical evidence from field settings…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2026-04-06 Lenard Strahringer , Sven Eric Prüß , Kai Riemer

Technical Q&A sites have become essential for software engineers as they constantly seek help from other experts to solve their work problems. Despite their success, many questions remain unresolved, sometimes because the asker does not…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2019-03-25 Fabio Calefato , Filippo Lanubile , Nicole Novielli

Images are increasingly being shared by software developers in diverse channels including question-and-answer forums like Stack Overflow. Although prior work has pointed out that these images are meaningful and provide complementary…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-03-29 Dong Wang , Tao Xiao , Christoph Treude , Raula Gaikovina Kula , Hideaki Hata , Yasutaka Kamei

Community Question Answering platforms such as Stack Overflow help a wide range of users solve their challenges online. As the popularity of these communities has grown over the years, both the number of members and posts have escalated.…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2020-06-02 Mohammadrezar Tavakoli , Maliheh Izadi , Abbas Heydarnoori

In the rapidly evolving landscape of developer communities, Q&A platforms serve as crucial resources for crowdsourcing developers' knowledge. A notable trend is the increasing use of images to convey complex queries more effectively.…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-07-09 Faiz Ahmed , Suprakash Datta , Maleknaz Nayebi

The content quality of shared knowledge in Stack Overflow (SO) is crucial in supporting software developers with their programming problems. Thus, SO allows its users to suggest edits to improve the quality of a post (i.e., question and…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-10-10 Saikat Mondal , Gias Uddin , Chanchal Roy

Stack Overflow (SO) is a popular platform among developers seeking advice on various software-related topics, including privacy and security. As for many knowledge-sharing websites, the value of SO depends largely on users' engagement,…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2022-07-05 Nicolás E. Díaz Ferreyra , Melina Vidoni , Maritta Heisel , Riccardo Scandariato

Stack Overflow is the most popular Q&A website among software developers. As a platform for knowledge sharing and acquisition, the questions posted in Stack Overflow usually contain a code snippet. Stack Overflow relies on users to properly…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2018-09-24 Kamel Alreshedy , Dhanush Dharmaretnam , Daniel M. German , Venkatesh Srinivasan , T. Aaron Gulliver

Code maintenance data sets typically consist of a before and after version of the code that contains the improvement or fix. Such data sets are important for software engineering support tools related to code maintenance, such as program…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-01-27 Henry Tang , Sarah Nadi

On Stack Overflow, users reuse 11,926,354 external links to share the resources hosted outside the Stack Overflow website. The external links connect to the existing programming-related knowledge and extend the crowdsourced knowledge on…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-02-15 Jiakun Liu , Haoxiang Zhang , Xin Xia , David Lo , Ying Zou , Ahmed E. Hassan , Shanping Li

A growing number of software-intensive systems are being accused of violating or ignoring human values (e.g., privacy, inclusion, and social responsibility), and this poses great difficulties to individuals and society. Such violations…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-03-22 Sara Krishtul , Mojtaba Shahin , Humphrey O. Obie , Hourieh Khalajzadeh , Fan Gai , Ali Rezaei Nasab , John Grundy

Norms are behavioral expectations in communities. Online communities are also expected to abide by the rules and regulations that are expressed in the code of conduct of a system. Even though community authorities continuously prompt their…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2022-11-02 Jithin Cheriyan , Bastin Tony Roy Savarimuthu , Stephen Cranefield

Background: Sub-optimal code is prevalent in software systems. Developers may write low-quality code due to many reasons, such as lack of technical knowledge, lack of experience, time pressure, management decisions, and even unhappiness.…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-04-15 Chaiyong Ragkhitwetsagul , Matheus Paixao

Software developers often look for solutions to their code-level problems using the Stack Overflow Q&A website. To receive help, developers frequently submit questions containing sample code segments and the description of the programming…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-12-28 Saikat Mondal , Mohammad Masudur Rahman , Chanchal K. Roy , Kevin Schneider

Stack Overflow and other similar forums are used commonly by developers to seek answers for their software development as well as privacy-related concerns. Recently, ChatGPT has been used as an alternative to generate code or produce…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-06-13 Zack Delile , Sean Radel , Joe Godinez , Garrett Engstrom , Theo Brucker , Kenzie Young , Sepideh Ghanavati

The popularity of blockchain technology continues to grow rapidly in both industrial and academic fields. Most studies of blockchain focus on the improvements of security, usability, or efficiency of blockchain protocols, or the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2018-06-20 He Jiang , Dong Liu , Zhilei Ren , Tao Zhang

Context: Stack Overflow (SO) has won the intention from software engineers (e.g., architects) to learn, practice, and utilize development knowledge, such as Architectural Knowledge (AK). But little is known about AK communicated in SO,…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-01-06 Musengamana Jean de Dieu , Peng Liang , Mojtaba Shahin , Arif Ali Khan

Online code clones are code fragments that are copied from software projects or online sources to Stack Overflow as examples. Due to an absence of a checking mechanism after the code has been copied to Stack Overflow, they can become toxic…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2019-04-03 Chaiyong Ragkhitwetsagul , Jens Krinke , Matheus Paixao , Giuseppe Bianco , Rocco Oliveto

Context: Navigating the knowledge of Stack Overflow (SO) remains challenging. To make the posts vivid to users, SO allows users to write and edit posts with Markdown or HTML so that users can leverage various formatting styles (e.g., bold,…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2024-04-29 Shahla Shaan Ahmed , Shaowei Wang , Yuan Tian , Tse-Hsun , Chen , Haoxiang Zhang