Online Technical Support: How It Works and Why It Fails?

Online communities and discussion forums have become focal points for recent research. The online communities exist in many disciplines, and the use of forums is increasing rapidly in education, the workplace, and pursuits such as online gaming. Research has shown that one ultimate goal of online communities is to help members solve software problems. This paper explores support forums in open source software (OSS) communities in an effort to determine just how the forums help solve problems -- if they really do. By understanding problem-solving in online communities, members may be able to provide better support for their participants. Additionally, lessons learned may be used to further forum use in education and the workplace. Two qualitative studies became the basis for the examination of problem-solving in these communities. The results indicate that only about half of the problems presented in an open source forum are solved.