Rhetorical strategies that elicit response in online communities
collaborators | publicationsWith Bob Kraut
Carnegie Mellon University
(September 2005—)
When a newcomer posts a message to an online community, she's evaluating whether the group will meet her social, information, or entertainment needs. Depending on the community's response, she'll either continue to participate or leave.
Receiving even a single reply has dramatic consequences: she's more likely to post again, stay longer in the group, and reply to others.
Our goal is to determine the factors that affect whether a newsgroup message will get a reply, identify those factors automatically in natural language text, and predict at the time it's written whether a message will get a reply.
Introducing oneself and asking questions are two rhetorical strategies that increase the likelihood of reply. We're using machine learning to identify introductions and explicit/implicit questions in newsgroup messages, and building models to predict reply based on these and other contextual and linguistic features.
Some messages never get replies, even when similar knowledge has been discussed previously in the group. We are also investigating how to connect question-askers with appropriate answers, either in text (e.g. search results from archives) or human form (someone who answered the question previously).
Current and past collaborators
Robert Kraut
Herbert A. Simon Professor of Human-Computer Interaction, Carnegie Mellon University
Dr. Kraut has broad interests in the design and social impact of computing and has conducted empirical research on office automation and employment quality, technology and home-based employment, the communication needs of collaborating scientists, the design of information technology for small-group intellectual work, and the impact of national information networks on organizations and families.
Brian Amento
Senior Technical Specialist
AT&T Labs-Research
Dr. Amento investigates tools that combine the efficiency of computers at performing repetitive tasks with the proficiency of humans at making quick relevance judgments for prioritization of processing.
Anthony Hornof
Assistant Professor, Department of Computer and Information Science
University of Oregon
Dr. Hornof's primary research interest is human-computer interaction (HCI). Specifically, he explores the perceptual, cognitive, and motoric processes that people employ in routine computer usage, and seeks to construct a tool that would predict the usability of a proposed visual interface.
Erik NilsenAssociate Professor of Psychology, Department Chair
Lewis & Clark College
Dr. Nilsen specializes in human-computer interaction, human motor performance, knowledge representation, cognitive skills, unified theories of cognition, computer supported collaborative work, and instructional technology.
Nik GormanUniversity of Southern California
Jessica Hodgins
Professor of Computer Science and Robotics
Carnegie Mellon University
Dr. Hodgins joined the Robotics Institute and Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University as a Associate Professor in fall of 2000. Prior to moving to CMU, she was an an Associate Professor and Assistant Dean in the College of Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 1989. She has received a NSF Young Investigator Award, a Packard Fellowship, and a Sloan Fellowship. She was editor-in-chief of ACM Transactions on Graphics from 2000-2002 and Papers Chair for ACM SIGGRAPH 2003.
Nancy PollardAssistant Professor of Robotics and Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
Dr. Pollard received her PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in 1994, where she performed research on grasp planning for articulated robot hands. Before joining CMU, Nancy was an Assistant Professor and part of the Computer Graphics Group at Brown University. Her primary research objective is to understand how to create natural motion for animated human characters and humanoid robots.
Burke, M., and Kraut, R. (2008). Mopping up: Modeling Wikipedia promotion decisions. ACM CSCW 2008: Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work.
Burke, M., and Kraut R. (2008) Mind your Ps and Qs: The impact of politeness and rudeness in online communities. ACM CSCW 2008: Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work.
Kraut, R., Wang, X., Butler, B., Joyce, E., and Burke, M. (under review). Beyond information: Developing the Relationship between the Individual and the Group in Online Communities. Information Systems Research.
Burke, M., Kraut, R., and Joyce, E. (under review). Membership claims and requests: Some newcomer socialization strategies in online communities. Journal of Applied Psychology.Burke, M., Joyce, E., Kim, T., Anand, V., and Kraut, R. (2007). Introductions and Requests: Rhetorical Strategies That Elicit Response in Online Communities. Third International Conference on Communities & Technologies 2007. 
PDF
Torrey, C., Lee, M., Burke, M. Dey, A., Fussell, S., and Kiesler, S., (2007). Connected Giving: Ordinary People Coordinating Disaster Relief on the Internet. Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) 2007.
Torrey, C., Burke, M., Lee, M., Dey, A., Fussell, S., and Kiesler, S., (2007). Approaches to Authority in Online Disaster Relief Communities after Hurricane Katrina. Forthcoming in Atwater, L. and Weisband, S. (Eds.). Leadership at a Distance. Erlbaum, in press.
Burke M., Amento, B., Isengard, P. (2006). Error Correction of Voicemail Transcripts in SCANMail. ACM CHI 2006: Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, New York: ACM. PDF (1M)
Burke, M., Hornof, A., Nilsen, E., and Gorman, N (2005). High Cost Banner Blindness: Ads Increase Perceived Workload, Hinder Visual Search, and Are Forgotten. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 12(4), 423-445. PDF (1M)
Burke, M., Gorman, N., Nilsen, E., and A. Hornof (2004). Banner Advertisements Hinder Visual Search and Are Ignored. ACM CHI 2004: Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, New York: ACM, 1139-1142. PDF (214K) and 
Slideshow (1.2M)
Burke, M. K. & Hornof, A. J. (2001). The Effect of Animated Banner Advertisements on a Visual Search Task. University of Oregon, Department of CIS Technical Report 02-03, University of Oregon. PDF (601K)
Burke, M.K. (2001). The Effect of Animated Banner Advertisements on a Visual Search Task. University of Oregon, Clark Honors College Thesis. PDF (350K)