Contextual Documentation Referencing on Stack Overflow

Abstract

Software engineering is knowledge-intensive and requires software developers to continually search for knowledge, often on community question answering platforms such as Stack Overflow. Such information sharing platforms do not exist in isolation, and part of the evidence that they exist in a broader software documentation ecosystem is the common presence of hyperlinks to other documentation resources found in forum posts. With the goal of helping to improve the efficiency of information flow on Stack Overflow, we conducted a study to answer the question of how and why documentation is referenced in Stack Overflow threads. We sampled and classified 759 links from two different domains, regular expressions and Android development, to qualitatively and quantitatively analyze the links' context and purpose. We found that links on Stack Overflow serve a wide range of distinct purposes. This observation has major corollaries, including our observation that links to documentation resources are a reflection of the information needs typical to a technology domain. We contribute a framework and method to and analyze the context and purpose of Stack Overflow links, a public dataset of annotated links, and a description of five major observations about linking practices on Stack Overflow, with detailed links to evidence, implications, and a conceptual framework to capture the relations between the five observations.

FACOS: Finding API Relevant Contents on Stack Overflow with Semantic and Syntactic Analysis

“…[4] explored the Crowd documentation by examining the dynamics of API discussions on Stack Overflow, whereas [38] dubbed the Stack Overflow as the Social Media for Developer Support in terms of provided utilities. [39] and [40] worked on classifying stack overflow posts on API issues and contextual documentation referencing on stack overflow. The dichotomy of these studies is notable where some research like [41] and [42] studies how API documentation fails via the API misuse on stack overflow, other studies [43], [44] heavily lean on the Crowdsourced knowledge on stack overflow for automated API documentation with tutorials.…”

Optimizing API Documentation

“…In fact, Robillard [13] and Robillard & DeLine [7] identified documentation as main obstacle for learning a new API. In response to the findings of Robillard & DeLine, much research has been devoted to explore what users of API documentation want, expect and need by conducting interviews and surveys [4,14], by observing developers solving tasks with a new API [8,9,15], and by analyzing API documentation developers produce themselves [16] or refer others to [17]. In this section, we summarize main results of these research efforts.…”

“…business processes involved in B2C or B2B commerce, procurement or enterprise resource planning) greatly facilitates the learning process [8,21]. Furthermore, links to documentation developers include in answers on StackOverflow often point to description of concepts, emphasizing the importance of conceptual background information as well [17]. However, it is a challenge that developers tend to ignore documents which focus on conceptual information, hence potentially convey the domain-related background knowledge of an API, with the reluctance to refer to concepts documents apparently being independent of the learning strategy the developers adopt [14].…”

Broken External Links on Stack Overflow

“…G ómez et al [35] investigated the external links (i.e., links that reference to the resources hosted outside the Stack Overflow website) from the link types, website types, and the most referenced links and websites perspectives. Baltes et al analyzed the purpose of the links that reference to documentation websites on Stack Overflow, e.g., pointing to API documentation and concept descriptions on Wikipedia for background readings [36]. Correa et al investigated the role and impact of Stack Overflow in issue tracking systems [37].…”

“…We encourage Stack Overflow to take action on these broken links. More specifically, Stack Overflow could learn from Wikipedia 36 where links can be reviewed, replaced with a working or archive link, tagged, or removed. On Stack Overflow, moderators could use a tool, e.g., W3C checklink 37 , and Xenu's Link Sleuth 38 , to automatically scan links to identify the broken links.…”