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Anonymous Quorans are still Quorans, just anonymous

Published: 27 June 2015 Publication History

Abstract

This article presents a study that investigates how anonymity influences user participation in an online question-and-answer platform (Quora). The study is one step in identifying hypotheses that can be used to address a research and design issue concerning the role of anonymity in online participation, particularly among older informal caregivers. We present here a model that describes the factors that influence participation, which we based on the literature. These factors were used when analyzing the answers to questions in the health category on Quora. The results of this study complement an earlier study that we conducted on YouTube comments. On Quora, there was only one significant difference between anonymous and non-anonymous answers: with anonymous answers, social appreciation correlated with the answer's length.

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Cited By

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  • (2023)How do we elicit more user feedback in the social Q&A community? A consideration of the expertise-required questionInformation Technology & People10.1108/ITP-10-2022-075137:4(1587-1612)Online publication date: 22-May-2023
  • (2021)Anonymity in Questions and Answers about HealthProceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting10.1177/107118132064115064:1(658-662)Online publication date: 9-Feb-2021
  • (2021)Anonymity, User Engagement, Quality, and Trolling on Q&A SitesProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34492155:CSCW1(1-27)Online publication date: 22-Apr-2021
  • Show More Cited By

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cover image ACM Other conferences
C&T '15: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Communities and Technologies
June 2015
167 pages
ISBN:9781450334600
DOI:10.1145/2768545
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 June 2015

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Author Tags

  1. Quora
  2. anonymity
  3. social support

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  • Research-article

Funding Sources

  • ANR, CNSA

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C&T '15
C&T '15: Communities and Technologies 2015
June 27 - 30, 2015
Limerick, Ireland

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Overall Acceptance Rate 80 of 183 submissions, 44%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2023)How do we elicit more user feedback in the social Q&A community? A consideration of the expertise-required questionInformation Technology & People10.1108/ITP-10-2022-075137:4(1587-1612)Online publication date: 22-May-2023
  • (2021)Anonymity in Questions and Answers about HealthProceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting10.1177/107118132064115064:1(658-662)Online publication date: 9-Feb-2021
  • (2021)Anonymity, User Engagement, Quality, and Trolling on Q&A SitesProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/34492155:CSCW1(1-27)Online publication date: 22-Apr-2021
  • (2021)How Potential New Members Approach an Online CommunityComputer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)10.1007/s10606-020-09390-0Online publication date: 18-Jan-2021
  • (2020)Community matters more than anonymityProceedings of the 12th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining10.1109/ASONAM49781.2020.9381425(94-98)Online publication date: 7-Dec-2020
  • (2019)Deep Dive into Anonymity: Large Scale Analysis of Quora QuestionsSocial Informatics10.1007/978-3-030-34971-4_3(35-49)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2019
  • (2018)Nutzerorientierte Gestaltung von interaktiver E-PartizipationDigitale Bürgerbeteiligung10.1007/978-3-658-21621-4_6(127-161)Online publication date: 14-Sep-2018
  • (2017)Interpretations of Online Anonymity in Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics AnonymousProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/31347261:CSCW(1-22)Online publication date: 6-Dec-2017
  • (2017)Supporting Communities of Practice in Public AdministrationsProceedings of the 8th International Conference on Communities and Technologies10.1145/3083671.3083699(36-45)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2017
  • (2017)Anonymity interacting with participation on a Q&A siteAI & Society10.1007/s00146-016-0660-932:3(369-381)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2017

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