Chan, Jeffrey, Conor Hayes, and Elizabeth Daly. "Decomposing discussion forums and boards using user roles." Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media. Vol. 4. No. 1. 2010.

This paper examines the role of discussion forums in Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 infrastructures, focusing on the importance of information exchange behavior for their health and sustainability. It highlights the need for a deeper understanding of communication behavior to improve forum management, service delivery, and risk detection. The study presents an empirical analysis of user communication roles in a medium-sized bulletin board, analyzing the composition of various forums and demonstrating that user behavior, rather than topic, underlies similarities between forums.