Modelling Experts Behaviour in Q&A Communities to Predict Worthy Discussions

This paper investigates expert behaviour in Q&A communities in order to understand their influence in online discussions. Our evaluation shows that experts are more likely to provide help than non-experts, and when they participate in a discussion, the quality and length of the discussions tend to increase. In addition, we propose the usage of two models (Artificial Neural Network and Stochastic Gradient Boosting) to predict worthy discussions in the community. The results show that some adjustments in the models' parameters and in the input data can significantly improve the quality of the predictions.This work was partially supported by FAPERJ (through grant E-26-102.256/2013 - BBP/Bursary Associa: Exploring a Semantic and Social Learning-Teaching Environment)