research-article

Facing up to the inequality of crowdsourced API documentation

Authors:

Hewijin Christine Jiau,

Feng-Pu YangAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, Volume 37, Issue 1

Pages 1 - 9

https://doi.org/10.1145/2088883.2088892

Published: 27 January 2012 Publication History

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Abstract

API usability is a crucial issue in software development. One bottleneck of API usability is insufficient documentation. This study empirically confirmed the inequality of crowdsourced API documentation, which is one of the main sources of API documentation. To manage the inequality, a method for documentation reuse is proposed based on the nature of object-oriented programming language, inheritance. A case study was conducted in Stackoverflow, which is a widely used Q&A site, to study the feasibility of the documentation reuse. Results of the case study indicate that documentation reuse is feasible in improving both the coverage and quality of crowdsourced API documentations.

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Anwar ZAfzal HKadry SCheng X(2024)Semantic Web Approaches in Stack OverflowInternational Journal on Semantic Web & Information Systems10.4018/IJSWIS.35861720:1(1-61)Online publication date: 9-Nov-2024
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Facing up to the inequality of crowdsourced API documentation

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes

ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes Volume 37, Issue 1

January 2012

115 pages

ISSN:0163-5948

DOI:10.1145/2088883

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Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 27 January 2012

Published in SIGSOFT Volume 37, Issue 1

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Anwar ZAfzal HKadry SCheng X(2024)Semantic Web Approaches in Stack OverflowInternational Journal on Semantic Web & Information Systems10.4018/IJSWIS.35861720:1(1-61)Online publication date: 9-Nov-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.4018/IJSWIS.358617
Quan YWang PWang YJin X(2023)GUI-Based YOLOv8 License Plate Detection System Design2023 5th International Conference on Control and Robotics (ICCR)10.1109/ICCR60000.2023.10444859(156-161)Online publication date: 23-Nov-2023
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Eberhart ZBansal AMcMillan C(2022)A Wizard of Oz Study Simulating API Usage Dialogues With a Virtual AssistantIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2020.304093548:6(1883-1904)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2022
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Moslehi PRilling JAdams B(2022)A user survey on the adoption of crowd-based software engineering instructional screencasts by the new generation of software developersJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2021.111144185:COnline publication date: 6-May-2022
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Uddin GKhomh FRoy C(2021)Automatic API Usage Scenario Documentation from Technical Q&A SitesACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/343976930:3(1-45)Online publication date: 23-Apr-2021
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Khan JTawkat Islam Khondaker MUddin GIqbal A(2021)Automatic Detection of Five API Documentation Smells: Practitioners’ Perspectives2021 IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER)10.1109/SANER50967.2021.00037(318-329)Online publication date: Mar-2021
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Uddin GKhomh FRoy C(2020)Mining API Usage Scenarios from Stack OverflowInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2020.106277(106277)Online publication date: Feb-2020
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Moslehi PAdams BRilling J(2020)A feature location approach for mapping application features extracted from crowd-based screencasts to source codeEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-020-09874-zOnline publication date: 16-Sep-2020
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Jiang HLi XRen ZXuan JJin Z(2019)Toward Better Summarizing Bug Reports With Crowdsourcing Elicited AttributesIEEE Transactions on Reliability10.1109/TR.2018.287342768:1(2-22)Online publication date: Mar-2019
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