Where to ask and how to ask? The case of community question answering sites

This paper seeks to investigate how good answers and prompt answers can be obtained from community question answering sites (CQAs) on the basis of (1) where questions are asked, and (2) how questions are asked. To address the question of “Where to ask?”, six popular CQAs were investigated. They include three English sites, namely, Yahoo! Answers, WikiAnswers, and Answerbag, as well as three Chinese sites, namely, Baidu Knows, Tencent Soso Wenwen, and Sina iAsk. On the other hand, to address the question of “How to ask?”, five types of questions commonly posted in CQAs were identified, namely, factoid, list, definition, complex interactive, and target. The results are as follows: (1) In terms of “Where to ask?”, Yahoo! Answers, Answerbag, and Tencent Soso Wenwen were found likely to attract good quality answers promptly. (2) In terms of “How to ask?”, definition, and complex interactive question types were found likely to receive good quality answers promptly. The implications of the findings are discussed.