Abstract-Online discussions about software applications generate a large amount of requirements-related information. This information can potentially be usefully applied in requirements engineering; however currently, there are few systematic approaches for extracting such information. To address this gap, we propose Canary, an approach for extracting and querying requirements-related information in online discussions. The highlight of our approach is a high-level query language that combines aspects of both requirements and discussion in online forums. We give the semantics of the query language in terms of relational databases and SQL. We demonstrate the usefulness of the language using examples on real data extracted from online discussions. Our approach relies on human annotations of online discussions. We highlight the subtleties involved in interpreting the content in online discussions and the assumptions and choices we made to effectively address them. We demonstrate the feasibility of generating high-quality annotations by obtaining them from lay Amazon Mechanical Turk users.

Social media serves as an extensive repository of user interaction related to software applications. Users discuss application features and express their sentiments about them in both qualitative (usually in natural language) and quantitative ways (for example, via votes). Further, many social media applications support explicit social networks of users and measures such as user reputation. Naturally, content on social media has the potential to inform requirements engineering. However, models of requirements and associated tools that enable software engineers to make sense of this information are currently lacking. In this paper, we present a preliminary study of interaction among users about Google Maps on the forum Reddit. We highlight important artifacts relevant to requirements in these interactions. We discuss goal modeling as an archetypal requirements modeling approach and use that as a basis for enhancing requirements modeling with notions that capture user interaction. Index Terms-social media, user feedback, end-user involvement, requirements modeling, interaction

Abstract-Interactions among stakeholders and engineers is key to Requirements engineering (RE). Increasingly, such interactions take place online, producing large quantities of qualitative (natural language) and quantitative (e.g., votes) data. Although a rich source of requirements-related information, extracting such information from online forums can be nontrivial.We propose Canary, a tool-assisted approach, to facilitate systematic extraction of requirements-related information from online forums via high-level queries. Canary (1) adds structure to natural language content on online forums using an annotation schema combining requirements and argumentation ontologies, (2) stores the structured data in a relational database, and (3) compiles high-level queries in Canary syntax to SQL queries that can be run on the relational database.We demonstrate key steps in Canary workflow, including (1) extracting raw data from online forums, (2) applying annotations to the raw data, and (3) compiling and running interesting Canary queries that leverage the social aspect of the data.

A topic of recent interest is how to apply crowdsourced information toward producing better software requirements. A research question that has received little attention so far is how to leverage crowdsourced information toward creating better-informed models of requirements. In this paper, we contribute a method following which information in online discussions may be leveraged toward constructing goal models. A salient feature of our method is that it applies high-level queries to draw out potentially relevant information from discussions. We also give a subjective logic-based method for deriving an ordering of the goals based on the amount of supporting and rebutting evidence in the discussions. Such an ordering can potentially be applied toward prioritizing goals for implementation.

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