Good Question! The Effect of Positive Feedback on Contributions to Online Public Goods
Fuente:
arXiv
Guardado en:
| Autores principales: | , , , , |
|---|---|
| Formato: | Preprint |
| Publicado: |
2026
|
| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | |
| Etiquetas: |
Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
|
| _version_ | 1866918440844918784 |
|---|---|
| author | Wachs, Johannes Röseler, Leonore Gesche, Tobias Ash, Elliott Hannák, Anikó |
| author_facet | Wachs, Johannes Röseler, Leonore Gesche, Tobias Ash, Elliott Hannák, Anikó |
| contents | Online platforms where volunteers answer each other's questions are important sources of knowledge, yet participation is declining. We ran a pre-registered experiment on Stack Overflow, one of the largest Q&A communities for software development (N = 22,856), randomly assigning newly posted questions to receive an anonymous upvote. Within four weeks, treated users were 6.3% more likely to ask another question and 12.9% more likely to answer someone else's question. A second upvote produced no additional effect. The effect on answering was larger, more persistent, and still significant at twelve weeks. Next, we examine how much of these effects are due to algorithmic amplification, since upvotes also raise a question's rank and visibility. Algorithmic amplification is not important for the effect on asking additional questions, but it matters a lot for the effect on answering other questions. The increase in visibility increases the probability that another user provides an answer, and that experience appears to shift the poster toward broader community participation. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_10360 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Good Question! The Effect of Positive Feedback on Contributions to Online Public Goods Wachs, Johannes Röseler, Leonore Gesche, Tobias Ash, Elliott Hannák, Anikó Social and Information Networks Human-Computer Interaction General Economics Economics Online platforms where volunteers answer each other's questions are important sources of knowledge, yet participation is declining. We ran a pre-registered experiment on Stack Overflow, one of the largest Q&A communities for software development (N = 22,856), randomly assigning newly posted questions to receive an anonymous upvote. Within four weeks, treated users were 6.3% more likely to ask another question and 12.9% more likely to answer someone else's question. A second upvote produced no additional effect. The effect on answering was larger, more persistent, and still significant at twelve weeks. Next, we examine how much of these effects are due to algorithmic amplification, since upvotes also raise a question's rank and visibility. Algorithmic amplification is not important for the effect on asking additional questions, but it matters a lot for the effect on answering other questions. The increase in visibility increases the probability that another user provides an answer, and that experience appears to shift the poster toward broader community participation. |
| title | Good Question! The Effect of Positive Feedback on Contributions to Online Public Goods |
| topic | Social and Information Networks Human-Computer Interaction General Economics Economics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.10360 |