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An exploratory study on the repeatedly shared external links on Stack Overflow

  • Published:
Empirical Software Engineering Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

On Stack Overflow, users reuse 11,926,354 external links to share the resources hosted outside the Stack Overflow website. The external links connect to the existing programming-related knowledge and extend the crowdsourced knowledge on Stack Overflow. Some of the external links, so-called as repeated external links, can be shared for multiple times. We observe that 82.5% of the link sharing activities (i.e., sharing links in any question, answer, or comment) on Stack Overflow share external resources, and 57.0% of the occurrences of the external links are sharing the repeated external links. However, it is still unclear what types of external resources are repeatedly shared. To help users manage their knowledge, we wish to investigate the characteristics of the repeated external links in knowledge sharing on Stack Overflow. In this paper, we analyze the repeated external links on Stack Overflow. We observe that external links that point to the text resources (hosted in documentation websites, tutorial websites, etc.) are repeatedly shared the most. We observe that different users repeatedly share the same knowledge in the form of repeated external links, thus increasing the maintenance effort of knowledge (e.g., update invalid links in multiple posts). The repeated external links can bring risks to the software engineering process, as 1) the same users can repeatedly share the external links for the purpose of promotion, and 2) external links can point to webpages with an overload of information that makes it difficult for users to retrieve relevant information. Our findings provide insights to Stack Overflow moderators and researchers. For example, we encourage Stack Overflow to centrally manage the commonly occurring knowledge in the form of repeated external links in order to better maintain the crowdsourced knowledge on Stack Overflow.

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Notes

  1. https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/358992/

  2. https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask

  3. https://stackoverflow.com/help/minimal-reproducible-example

  4. https://stackoverflow.com/help/formatting

  5. https://stackoverflow.com/editing-help#code

  6. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28207373/

  7. https://github.com/jersey/jersey/blob/master/examples/https-clientserver-grizzly/src/main/java/org/glassfish/jersey/examples/h-ttpsclientservergrizzly/SecurityFilter.java

  8. https://stackoverflow.com/editing-help

  9. https://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/252811/

  10. For example, we consider docs.oracle.com and www.oracle.com are different websites because they have different full domains.

  11. https://zenodo.org/record/3255045#.XYWaMyh3iUk

  12. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_link

  13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website

  14. https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/90342

  15. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/313790/i-stack-imgur-seems-to-be-down

  16. https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/341016/is-it-ok-to-re-upload-externally-hosted-images-on-stack-overflows-imgur

  17. https://stackoverflow.com/help/minimal-reproducible-example

  18. https://stackoverflow.com/editing-help#code

  19. https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/358992/ive-been-told-to-create-a-runnable-example-with-stack-snippets-how-do-i-dohttps://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/358992/ive-been-told-to-create-a-runnable-example-with-stack-snippets-how-do-i-do

  20. https://stackoverflow.com/q/28886508/

  21. http://bugs.python.org/issue22942

  22. https://stackoverflow.com/q/22021491/

  23. https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask

  24. https://www.google.com/#q=_IOWR_BAD+OR+_IOR_BAD+OR+_-IOW_BAD&safe=off

  25. https://stackoverflow.com/q/22021491/22021641

  26. https://www.google.com/search?q=_IOR_BAD+lkml

  27. https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/176445

  28. https://stackoverflow.com/q/2660914

  29. http://goo.gl/b93ns

  30. http://www.youtube.com/wa-tch?v=_CruQY55HOk

  31. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL284C9FF2488-BC6D1

  32. https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360004716091-Wayback-Machine-General-Information

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Acknowledgments

This research was partially supported by the National Science Foundation of China (No. U20A20173), Key Research and Development Program of Zhejiang Province (No.2021C01014), and the National Research Foundation, Singapore under its Industry Alignment Fund – Prepositioning (IAF-PP) Funding Initiative. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Huawei and the National Research Foundation, Singapore.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China

    Jiakun Liu & Shanping Li

  2. Centre for Software Excellence at Huawei, Toronto, Canada

    Haoxiang Zhang

  3. Software Engineering Application Technology Lab, Huawei, Hangzhou, China

    Xin Xia

  4. School of Information Systems, Singapore Management University, Singapore, Singapore

    David Lo

  5. Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada

    Ying Zou & Ahmed E. Hassan

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  1. Jiakun Liu
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  2. Haoxiang Zhang
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  3. Xin Xia
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  4. David Lo
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  5. Ying Zou
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  6. Ahmed E. Hassan
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  7. Shanping Li
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Correspondence to Xin Xia.

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Communicated by: Emerson Murphy-Hill

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Liu, J., Zhang, H., Xia, X. et al. An exploratory study on the repeatedly shared external links on Stack Overflow. Empir Software Eng 27, 19 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-021-10028-y

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