Stack overflow's hidden nuances: How does zip code define user contribution?

Abstract

Online communities like Stack Overflow rely on collective intelligence, with developers often incorporating its code snippets within their software repositories. Despite this relevance, concerns remain regarding issues surrounding user participation within the platform. While these phenomena have been studied in isolation, literature investigating them under a unified lens remain scarce. Our work aims to bridge this gap by operationalising metrics to represent user participation, behaviour, and community value across US states and cities. Our findings show that users from rural states tend to have higher daily posts, more votes, and produce more readable, positive-toned content with fewer typos. Those from urbanised states nonetheless obtain more question favourites, post scores, and accrue more views to both their questions and their profiles. At the city level, users from cities with prominent R&D sectors were found to curate more content and engage more actively, while cities without a strong tech presence show higher disengagements, increased likelihood of lurking, and a tendency to write longer code snippets. Qualitative content analysis triangulates our findings where users from tech hubs favour technical jargon and collaborative knowledge-sharing, their posts buzzing with coding documentations, debugging pointers, and personal anecdotes. In contrast, rural users weave a tapestry of emotions, expressing hope, frustration, and contentment alongside their many questions. Our research uncovers a dynamic interplay between factors influencing user participation, behaviour, and community values. Rather than static dichotomies, these elements exhibit multifaceted influences, suggesting varying impacts from diverse factors like tech access, educational initiatives, and inherent behavioural tendencies.