Automatic evaluation of information provider reliability and expertise

Published version of an article in the journal: World Wide Web. Also available from the publisher at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11280-013-0249-x Q&A social media have gained a lot of attention during the recent years. People rely on these sites to obtain information due to a number of advantages they offer as compared to conventional sources of knowledge (e.g., asynchronous and convenient access). However, for the same question one may find highly contradicting answers, causing an ambiguity with respect to the correct information. This can be attributed to the presence of unreliable and/or non-expert users. These two attributes (reliability and expertise) significantly affect the quality o…