Analysis of community question‐answering issues via machine learning and deep learning: State‐of‐the‐art review

Abstract Over the last couple of decades, community question‐answering sites (CQAs) have been a topic of much academic interest. Scholars have often leveraged traditional machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) to explore the ever‐growing volume of content that CQAs engender. To clarify the current state of the CQA literature that has used ML and DL, this paper reports a systematic literature review. The goal is to summarise and synthesise the major themes of CQA research related to (i) questions, (ii) answers and (iii) users. The final review included 133 articles. Dominant research themes include question quality, answer quality, and expert identification. In terms of dataset, some of the most widely studied platforms include Yahoo! Answers, Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow. The scope of most articles was confined to just one platform with few cross‐platform investigations. Articles with ML outnumber those with DL. Nonetheless, the use of DL in CQA research is on an upward trajectory. A number of research directions are proposed.