How the R community creates and curates knowledge: an extended study of stack overflow and mailing lists

One of the effects of social media’s prevalence in software development is the many flourishing communities of practice where users share a common interest. These large communities use many different communication channels, but little is known about how they create, share, and curate knowledge using such channels. In this paper, we report a mixed methods study of how one community of practice, the R software development community, creates and curates knowledge associated with questions and answers (Q&A) in two of its main communication channels: the R tag in Stack Overflow and the R-Help mailing list. The results reveal that knowledge is created and curated in two main forms: participatory, where multiple users explicitly collaborate to build knowledge, and crowdsourced, where individuals primarily work independently of each other. Moreover, we take a unique approach at slicing the data based on question score and participation activities over time. Our study reveals participation patterns, showing the existence of prolific contributors: users who are active across both channels and are responsible for a large proportion of the answers, serving as a bridge of knowledge. The key contributions of this paper are: a characterization of knowledge artifacts that are exchanged by this community of practice; the reasons why users choose one channel over the other; and insights on the community participation patterns, which indicate an evolution of the community and a shift from knowledge creation to knowledge curation.     

Development of a knowledge management initiative and system: A case study

As knowledge emerges as the primary strategic resource in the 21st century, many firms in the manufacturing and service sectors alike are beginning to introduce and implement Knowledge Management (KM). Organisations can certainly benefit from its application for enhanced decision support, efficiency and innovation, thus helping them to realise their strategic mission. However, KM is an emerging paradigm, and not many organisations have a clear idea of how to proceed with it. This paper presents the results of a case study conducted in one company in the United Kingdom (UK), the major aim being to identify how it has developed a KM initiative and system. Hopefully, the information extracted from this study will be beneficial to other organisations that are attempting to implement KM or to those that are in the throes of adopting it.     

The analytic network process for managing inter-enterprise collaboration: A case study in a collaborative enterprise network

In the last years, collaboration among enterprises has gained attention in the business environment as a means to remain competitive. Enterprises that are collaborating look for improving their performance but, in real assessments, they often do not establish efficient frameworks to structure and manage the enterprise association/inter-enterprise performance. In addition, there are many factors that act as barriers to effective collaboration and have to be also properly managed as they impact on the inter-enterprise performance. This paper provides a methodology based on the analytic network process (ANP) to identify and measure, under an integrated approach, both factors and inter-enterprise performance considering their reciprocal impact. With this innovative approach, enterprises will obtain significant information for the decision-making process regarding which are the factors and inter-enterprise performance elements that generate a higher impact and therefore have a high priority within the specific collaborative relationship. Thus, enterprises can focus their efforts on improving those most important factors and performance elements, and consequently, enhancing their competitiveness.     

开源软件社区知识协作网络核心开发者识别

开源软件社区中开发者是流动的,有效识别出核心开发者并对其采取保护措施能够更好地促进社区集体智慧涌现.以开源软件项目AngularJS为例,通过获取开发者在GitHub上的提交记录,抽取开发者协作关系构建知识协作网络,运用社会网络分析的方法,在原有度中心性和介数中心性指标的基础上,将开发者节点的社团结构考虑进来提出新的评价指标.采用TOPSIS多属性决策方法进行核心开发者识别.仿真模拟核心开发者的流失,探究识别效果.研究发现:考虑社团结构的指标和以往指标识别出的核心开发者具有较大的相似性,和真实名单对比均具有一定的准确性,但在重要性排序上考虑社团结构的指标体系识别效果更显著.     

NetDyn revisited: a replicated study of network dynamics

In 1992 and 1993, a series of experiments using the NetDyn tool was run at the University of Maryland to characterize network behavior. These studies identified multiple design and implementation faults in the Internet. Since that time, there has been a wide array of changes to the Internet. During the Spring of 1996, we conducted a replication of the NetDyn experiments in order to characterize end-to-end behavior in the current environment. In this paper, we present and discuss the latest results obtained during this study. Although the network seems to be stabilizing with respect to transit times, our current results are similar to the results from past experiments. That is, networks often exhibit unexpected behavior. The data suggest that, while there has been some improvement, there are still problem areas that need to be addressed.     

Road network monitoring: algorithms and a case study

Road network monitoring is an activity conducted daily by the Ministry of Transportation of Quebec. The complete network must be monitored every 2 weeks. In this setting, the usual objective in arc routing of minimizing the total travel distance is irrelevant. The vehicles are equipped with global positioning systems (GPS) locating devices to monitor events and trace routes. Since most planned route are not completed because of events on the network, there is a need to continuously re-plan and re-schedule routes. We developed a methodology to achieve this task by gathering data from the GPS trace, matching it to the planned routes within a geographic information systems (GIS) and then use mathematical algorithms to propose a new schedule with new routes. The interurban road network studied consists in a hierarchy of three classes of roads that have different monitoring standards. We tested three different methods using different objectives depending on the operators’ needs. Results show that the method that implies rescheduling based on assignment and reconstruction of routes with an arc-adding method gives the best coverage for each class of road.     

Team knowledge with motivation in a successful MMORPG game team: A case study

We studied the content of the team mental model with a case study about a successful online game team. This team was formed by high-ranking managers in a large raid guild to conduct a raid in War of Worldcraft. They were interviewed with a set of 5-W questions developed according to the conceptualizations of team mental model (Levine & Moreland, 1991). Toward the interview protocol, a content analysis was conducted with two-cycle coding method from exploratory to explanatory and a hierarchical framework from code, category, theme, to theory were generated to describe the team mental model. In the first cycle, 17 codes were extracted from participants' own wording for concepts that were shared by whom controlled various gaming characters. These codes are knowledge convergence about the problem at-hand, actors, events, affects and outcomes – what the core gamers have experienced through the collaborative gaming process. In the second cycle, coding was guided by learning theories. Six categories, mingled from 17 codes, showed collective knowledge of co-work process, leaders' works, work under supervision, seeking joint fun, relationship oriented, and balance between extrinsic-intrinsic motivations. From 6 categories, two themes were synthesized: the team (1) performed “joint hard work” for (2) seeking “joint hard fun.” The first theme comprised declarative and procedural knowledge representations and we consider it to be the commonality between this game team and ordinary work/learning teams. The second theme was composed of affective and cognitive evaluation components about intrinsic motivation which is in accordance with Self-determination theory (SDT, Deci & Ryan, 2000). In general, “Jointly hard work for hard fun” is the gist content of the team mental model. We found ample evidences that members explicitly recall shared motivational beliefs of team mates and emotional–motivational events in gaming. Based on the results of this study, several implications have been addressed for teachers to enhance students' intrinsic motivation in conducting quality Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning. Future studies are needed to further explore the relationship between the quality of team mental models and team-level performance.     

Building a database for product design knowledge retrieval—A case study in robotic design database

In product design process, when dealing with technical problems or initiating a new design, R&D personnel would often turn to technical database to seek inspiration. The building of a database with such documents has not been systematically dealt with. In this paper, several issues on how to build up a product design database are investigated: input source, sampling scheme and quality control. A case study of building a database for robotic design is used to demonstrate the concept. It is an archive of more than 1500 relevant technical papers. A total of 16 graduates are employed as operators in the labeling process and subsequently the hypothesis tests are utilized to process the labeling results. To ensure this database quality, the labeling consistency of each operator and the understanding of each category are tested. With the use of statistical methods, this work proposes a feasible and practical way to create such a database for product design.     

A multilingual knowledge management system: A case study of FAO and WAICENT

This paper provides a case study of a multilingual knowledge management system for a large organization. In so doing we elicit what it means for a system to be “multilingual” and how that changes some previous research on knowledge management. Some researchers have viewed multilingual as meaning a multilingual user interface. However, that is only a small part of the story. In this case we find multilingual also refers to a broad range of “multilingual,” including multilingual knowledge resources, multilingual feedback from users, multilingual search, multilingual ontologies and other concerns.     

Emotional disclosure on social networking sites: The role of network structure and psychological needs

We conducted three studies to understand how online emotional disclosure is influenced by social network structure on Facebook. Results showed that emotional disclosure was associated with both the density and size of users’ personal networks. Facebook users with denser networks disclosed more positive and negative emotions, and the relation between network density and emotional disclosure was mediated by stronger need for emotional expression. Facebook users with larger networks on Facebook disclosed more positive emotions, and the relation between network size and emotional disclosure was mediated by a stronger need for impression management. Our study extends past research by revealing the psychological mechanisms through which personal social network structure influences emotional disclosure. It suggests that social network size and density are associated with different psychological needs, which in turn lead to different patterns of emotional disclosure.     

Estimating the effect of organizational structure on knowledge transfer: A neural network approach

Artificial neural network has been put into abundant applications in social science research recently. In this study, we investigate the topological structures of organization network, which can possibly account for the different performances of intra-organizational knowledge transfer. We construct two types of networks including hierarchy and scale-free networks, and single-layer perceptron model (SLPM) was used to simulate the knowledge transfer from a remarkable member to the others. The statistical results indicate that although the performance of knowledge transfer is related to the aspiration of the remarkable member to transfer knowledge, but the scale-free structure is more effective in knowledge transfer than that in hierarchy structure.     

基于Java Servlet技术的网上Q＆A系统的设计和实现

本文描述了一个基于JavaServlet技术的网上Q&A系统的设计。该系统采用Browser/ Server结构,利用运行于Web服务器上的JavaServlet来操用Oracle数据库,以对用户的请求作出响应。中文对Servlet和使用JDBC存取Oracle数据库的技术作了介绍,并对该系统设计过程中遇到的若干问题及相应的解决方案作了阐述。     

Participation and common knowledge in a case study of student blogging

The interaction between participation and the emergence of common knowledge is the subject matter of this paper. A case study of a single class provides the focal point of analysis. During the semester the students participated in a blogging activity. As a result of their participation, the students create and distribute knowledge. The online efforts of the students can be described as participation in both a discourse and knowledge community. At one level, blogging is an activity composed of writing, reading, and commenting, and at a second level, the students share their thoughts in their own voices. At a third level, over the course of the semester, the student posts and commentary form a commons of information that can be mined later in the semester for other kinds of learning activities. Knowledge creation, distribution, and accumulation are analyzed in terms of student participation at both the level of individual events and from the perspective of an ongoing community.     

Strategic knowledge acquisition: a case study of learning through prototyping

To understand useful strategies for guiding the design process, we analyze the relationship between the use of prototypes and design knowledge acquisition. Prototyping in five design projects at a science museum is analyzed and compared. We also extract situations in which design knowledge is acquired from prototyping.     

Design and protection of an information network under a partial ordering: A case study

In this paper, we discuss a practical information system using a partial ordering for protecting information from illicit dissemination and modification. We use an office automation system designed to assist in the operation and management of a law office as an example. We briefly review recent results in the use of partial orderings for protection and administration of information networks, describe the design process wherein a partial ordering is used to represent the structure of information and its use in a law office, and show how this particular system was designed and used. We show examples of how the partial ordering was used to simplify risk analysis and guide well informed administrative decision making. We consider the practicality of this implementation, and the effects of security and integrity protection on the performance of the office. We summarize results and point out possible extensions of this work.     

Vorton dynamics: a case study of developing a fluid dynamics model for a vector processor

The raw performance of vector processors such as the CDC CYBER-205 has been well documented. The ability to apply this raw power to ever more complex algebraic algorithms has been reported in [9]. The final step in making computers of this class truly the revolutionary tools they are claimed to be is to develop whole applications that perform at a significant fraction of the raw power. This involves two distinct subclasses of problems. On the one hand, there are those pre-existing applications that must be mapped onto vector processors in such a way that not only is performance maintained, but also a (sometimes vague) set of computational boundary conditions of the user community is satisfied. On the other hand, there are those models which are developed ab initio with machines such as the CYBER-205 in mind. The development of solutions to problems in the former class involves psychology and politics as well as mathematics and computer science. We limit ourselves here to reporting on an example of the latter class, viz. a model to study a particular fluid-dynamic phenomenon, that was specifically designed with the CYBER-205 in mind.     

Evaluating background and prior knowledge: A case study on engineering graphics learning

In this work, we analyze the results obtained by a group of freshmen students in a test of prior knowledge on technical drawing carried out before and after attending an introductory course on this subject. The aim of this course was to help students to gain knowledge necessary to take full advantage of the CAD software that is regularly used to teach engineering graphics education in the classroom. Two aspects of the results will be analyzed. First, if this kind of course is good enough to show an improvement in students’ ability. As will be shown, the score obtained by the students improved after attending the course. Second, we have analyzed the results in order to know if the students’ prior knowledge is good enough to allow them coping with their first year. Although the answer to this question depends on many factors, it will be shown that an introductory course is a useful tool to reduce the possible gap between the students’ prior knowledge and the basic knowledge on geometry that should be requested to a first-year engineering student. The kind of test we propose here could also be implemented to test the cognitive abilities of the students.     

Design methods and code structure: a comparative case study

This paper addresses the question of the extent to which structured design methods contribute to the quality of a software product. Comparative data were obtained from the development of a commercial real-time embedded system, for which two versions of the product were produced. Version A was developed informally; by contrast version B used a structured design method. Maintenance effort for A was high compared with that for B. The case study was set up to measure the effect of using structured design on the resulting internal code structure whose metrics were captured by a static analysis tool. Results show that version B has less component coupling than version A. The component size results show that the distribution of B is shifted with respect to A, with more smaller components and fewer large ones. In respect of the detailed code structure within components, the results indicate that B is better structured than A. Only the fully structured components of A and B could be measured for testability, with no significant difference being apparent for the specified test case strategies. Overall, the evidence of this comparative study points to modest advantages of the structured method over the informal development method in this case. Caution must be exercised, however, against sweeping generalizations of these results.