An Empirical Study on Neophytes of Stack Overflow: How Welcoming the Community is Towards Them

Mohammad, Suzad; Jobair, Abdullah Al; Maisha, Zahin Raidah

dc.contributor.author	Mohammad, Suzad
dc.contributor.author	Jobair, Abdullah Al
dc.contributor.author	Maisha, Zahin Raidah
dc.date.accessioned	2023-03-23T10:07:10Z
dc.date.available	2023-03-23T10:07:10Z
dc.date.issued	2022-05-30
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Available: https://doi.org/10.1145/1099203.1099206	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/1781
dc.description	Supervised by Mr. Md. Jubair Ibna Mostafa;Lecturer, Mr. Md. Nazmul Haque, Lecturer, Department of Computer Science and Engineering(CSE), Islamic University of Technology (IUT) Board Bazar, Gazipur-1704, Bangladesh. This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Engineering, 2022.	en_US
dc.description.abstract	Stack Overflow (SO) is the most popular question and answers (Q&A) platform for programmers with a rapidly expanding community of new users. However, the unwelcoming environment towards new users has been under discussion for several years which is a major concern and hindrance towards the enhancement of a skillful community. In this work, we study a specific group of users who are either registered in the last 45 days or have a reputation less than or equal to 50 and term them as "neophytes". Upon establishing significance of the definition of neophytes, we perform manual analysis of neophytes' posts. We organize our research work into two research questions where we investigate whether neophytes actually face hurdles while collaborating in Stack Overflow and, if so, identify the potential reasons behind this phenomenon by qualitative and quantitative analysis. Our study finds that neophytes are indeed facing hurdles while collaborating in the platform. The reasons behind the hurdles include harsh moderation of posts, negligence of the posts, deleting or closing of posts, downvoting without providing any proper reasoning, etc. Our findings can provide guidelines to create a more user-friendly SO community. Furthermore, this study can guide researchers to observe the reactions of neophytes in adverse situations and recommend some steps for the community to make positive changes to the Stack Overflow environment.	en_US
dc.language.iso	en	en_US
dc.publisher	Department of Computer Science and Engineering(CSE), Islamic University of Technology(IUT), Board Bazar, Gazipur, Bangladesh	en_US
dc.subject	Neophyte, Stack Overflow (SO), New User, Hostile Environment	en_US
dc.title	An Empirical Study on Neophytes of Stack Overflow: How Welcoming the Community is Towards Them	en_US
dc.type	Thesis	en_US