Seven Words You Can't Say on Answerbag: Contested Terms and Conflict in a Social Q&A Community

Abstract

On a social Q&A site with thousands of transactions per day, what constitutes inappropriate content is not always obvious. In virtual communities such as this, users largely define and continuously renegotiate what constitutes appropriate participation, and moderators must allow healthy debate while curbing conflict. This paper presents an empirical analysis of Answerbag, a social Q&A site where moderators combined content analysis and transaction log analysis with information retrieval principles to identify non-obvious words associated with reported and unreported instances of conflict on the site. Content and transaction log analysis revealed the processes by which Answerbag users negotiated the meaning of contested terms, and suggested instances when conflict was a positive force for the community.