What people inquire about locations?: a study on the taxonomy of location-based questions in campus

Abstract

More and more people turn to their social networks to ask questions. Among these questions the most frequently asked ones are about locations. In this paper, we focus on this specific type of questions, and try to find out what kinds of questions people ask about locations in campus -- a microcosm of social network. We collected 2010 posts on campus information board of an active university forum in four weeks and extracted 413 location-based questions. Then we proposed a reliable taxonomy of location-based questions in four dimensions (purpose, level of urgency, reusability, and location range). In purpose dimension, we found (factual and opinion) knowledge seeking questions (69%) and help seeking and offering questions (26%) are most frequently asked. A further correlation analysis revealed the relations between these four dimensions and gave design implications.