Finding expertise using online community dialogue and the Duality of Expertise

Finding expertise using online community dialogue and the Duality of Expertise Michael Niemann Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University Melbourne, AUSTRALIA michael.niemann@monash.edu Abstract The Duality of Expertise considers the “Expert” to be a social role dependent on an individual’s expertise claims and the opinion of their community towards those claims. These are the internal and exter- nal aspects of a person’s expertise. My Expertise Model incorporates this duality in a process designed for expertise find- ing software in an online community fo- rum. In this model, a posting’s term us- age is evidence of expertise claims. The dialogue acts in replies to those postings are evidence of the community’s opinion. The model’s preprocessing element uses a bricolage of linguistic and IR tools and methods in a novel way to construct each author’s expertise profile. For any topic query, the profiles are ranked to determine the Community Topic Expert. A series of experiments demonstrate the advantage of utilising the Duality of Expertise when ranking experts rather than just the internal or external aspects of expertise. 1 Introduction The Internet provides people and organisations with access to new resources for problem solv- ing and guidance. While there are skillful staff or friends within their own networks, sometimes they need to look outside their own group to find the required knowledge. Specialised online com- munities are one such source of expertise. Traditionally, expertise is treated as a combina- tion of knowledge, training and experience (Eric- sson, 2000; Gould, 1999). However, expertise is also relative to the context in which it is sought (Mieg, 2006). Who is regarded as a suitable topic expert depends on who is available and the depth and breadth of their expertise. Any local resident may be able to tell you where the local train sta- tion is, but you may need a railway employee if you want know how regular the trains are. Likewise, it is not enough to simply determine who in an online community knows something about a topic. Many “know-it-alls” profess to be experts but do not have much expertise. For guid- ance, we look to others in the community for ad- vice on who they consider to be Community Topic Experts. This “Expert” label is a social role be- stowed by the community (Mieg, 2006). It is rel- ative to the community’s knowledge on the topic and the expertise they have encountered when in- teracting with members. Who is a suitable expert depends on the community’s opinion of the rela- tive expertise of its members. My research looks at modelling and identifying someone’s expertise by considering both their ex- pertise claims and their community’s opinion to- wards those claims. This Duality of Expertise is investigated by examining the linguistic interac- tions within an online community’s forum. The content of a forum author’s postings is evidence of their expertise claims. The dialogue acts of the community’s replies to those postings is evidence of the community’s opinion. My Expertise Model utilises the Duality of Ex- pertise in …

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