Exploring the Effect of Politeness on User Contribution in Q&A sites: A Case Study of Stack Overflow
Yiru Fangl, Tun Lu, Peng Zhang, Hansu Gu, Ning Gu · 2018
Online question and answer (Q&A) sites are platforms allowing users to seek information or social support, which is sometimes socially uncomfortable. A major challenge in Q&A sites is how to encourage user contribution. Theory of linguistic politeness informs us that politeness is able to ease the tension resulting from face-threatening acts (FTA), and it is applicable to Q&A sites. However, Stack Overflow (SO), one of the most popular Q&A site for programmers, denies the use of linguistic politeness (e.g., greetings, salutations, and gratitude expressions), aiming at building a nonsocial platform. This paper focuses on a specific politeness strategy-expressing gratitude-in Q&A sites, and examines its effect on answerers' future contributions from the aspects of quality. Results indicate that gratitude expressions in comments can motivate answerers to generate higher quality content.