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1. Extracting Archival-Quality Information from Software-Related Chats

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3377812.3381391  

   Chatterjee, Preetha (January 2020, ICSE Doctoral Symposium)

   Software developers are increasingly having conversations about software development via online chat services. Many of those chat communications contain valuable information, such as code descriptions, good programming practices, and causes of common errors/exceptions. However, the nature of chat community content is transient, as opposed to the archival nature of other developer communications such as email, bug reports and Q&A forums. As a result, important information and advice are lost over time. The focus of this dissertation is Extracting Archival Information from Software-Related Chats, specifically to (1) automatically identify conversations which contain archival-quality information, (2) accurately reduce the granularity of the information reported as archival information, and (3) conduct a case study to investigate how archival quality information extracted from chats compare to related posts in Q&A forums. Archiving knowledge from developer chats that could be used potentially in several applications such as: creating a new archival mechanism available to a given chat community, augmenting Q&A forums, or facilitating the mining of specific information and improving software maintenance tools. 

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2. When marital institutions break down: Impact and adaptation among the Enga of Papua New Guinea

   https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2021.13  

   Wiessner, Polly; Pupu, Nitze (January 2021, Evolutionary Human Sciences)

   null (Ed.)

   Abstract Institutions to regulate marriage and sexual mores are nearly universal across human societies to assure production and reproduction and weave the fabric of society. The stakeholders are many. What happens when marital traditions break down in times of rapid change? Taking a long-term perspective, we will first look at developments in marital institutions that occurred after the arrival of the sweet potato (ca. 400 BP) among the Enga of Papua New Guinea. Next, we will document changes in recent marital practices of 402 Enga women collected in 2007. With data from 270 public forums in customary courts applying restorative justice between 2008 and 2019, we will consider (a) the impact of the breakdown of marital institutions and (b) responses to adapt norms to new practices. In the absence of regulation by ‘traditional’ institutions, individuals pursue their own interests and passions with negative outcomes for families and communities. Communities, non-governmental organisations, churches and government throughout Papua New Guinea are seeking to adapt norms to new conditions. We consider both norm change resulting from community action via customary courts and what communities strive to preserve. Cultural institutions and accompanying norms are important factors in assuring production and reproduction; however, they can instill attitudes that inhibit adaptation. 

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3. What You Say is Relevant to How You Make Friends: Measuring the Effect of Content on Social Connection

   Xu, Yiqiao; Gitinabard, Niki; Lynch, Collin; Barnes, Tiffany (June 2019, International Conference on Educational Data Mining)

   Lynch, Collin F.; Merceron, Agathe; Desmarais, Michel; Nkambou, Roger (Ed.)

   Discussion forums are the primary channel for social interaction and knowledge sharing in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Many researchers have analyzed social connections on MOOC discussion forums. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is little research that distinguishes between the types of connections students make based upon the content of their forum posts. We analyze this effect by distinguishing on- and off-topic posts and comparing their respective social networks. We then analyze how these types of posts and their social connections can be used to predict the students’ final course performance. Pursuant to this work we developed a binary classifier to identify on- and off- topic posts and applied our analysis with the hand-coded and predicted labels. We conclude that the post type does affect the relationship between the students and their closest neighbors or community members clustered communities and their closest neighbor to their learning outcomes. 

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4. ‘Custodian of Online Communities’: How Moderator Mutual Support in Communities Help Fight Hate and Harassment Online

   Tabassum, Madiha; Mackey, Alana; Lerner, Ada (August 2024, USENIX)

   Volunteer moderators play a crucial role in safeguarding online communities, actively combating hate, harassment, and inappropriate content while enforcing community standards. Prior studies have examined moderation tools and practices, moderation challenges, and the emotional labor and burnout of volunteer moderators. However, researchers have yet to delve into the ways moderators support one another in combating hate and harassment within the communities they moderate through participation in meta-communities of moderators. To address this gap, we have conducted a qualitative content analysis of 115 hate and harassment-related threads from r/ModSupport and r/modhelp, two major subreddit forums for moderators for this type of mutual support. Our study reveals that moderators seek assistance on topics ranging from fighting attacks to understanding Reddit policies and rules to just venting their frustration. Other moderators respond to these requests by validating their frustration and challenges, showing emotional support, and providing information and tangible resources to help with their situation. Based on these findings, we share the implications of our work in facilitating platform and peer support for online volunteer moderators on Reddit and similar platforms. 

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5. The Art of Cybercrime Community Research

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3639362  

   Hughes, Jack; Pastrana, Sergio; Hutchings, Alice; Afroz, Sadia; Samtani, Sagar; Li, Weifeng; Santana Marin, Ericsson (February 2024, ACM Computing Surveys)

   In the last decade, cybercrime has risen considerably. One key factor is the proliferation of online cybercrime communities, where actors trade products and services, and also learn from each other. Accordingly, understanding the operation and behavior of these communities is of great interest, and they have been explored across multiple disciplines with different, often quite novel, approaches. This survey explores the challenges inherent to the field and the methodological approaches researchers used to understand this space. We note that, in many cases, cybercrime research is more of an art than a science. We highlight the good practices and propose a list of recommendations for future cybercrime community scholars, including taking steps to verify and validate results, establishing privacy and ethical research practices, and mitigating the challenge of ground truth data. 

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