The presence of beneficial knowledge in web forum: analysis by Kipling's Framework

Abstract

Words of doubt such as "What benefit can one get from web forums?" or "Web forums are meant just for small-talkâ" are examples of beliefs that were held by many individuals and researchers for a long time. Based on our observation of a web forum (http://asamboi.org), we found that at least quite a number of topics are dealing with deep knowledge contents. Our analysis of a so called learning zone that contains 35 forum topics and 789 messages, utilizing Kipling's 5W1H framework six "service-men", found that the depth of details were ranked in descending order as 'Siapa' (Who), 'Apa' (What), 'Bagaimana' (How), 'Kenapa' (Why), 'Mana' (Where) and 'Bila' (When). We conclude that web forums are a good web-resource for digital age learning styles, especially for youth.