Reddit’s “Explain Like I’m Five”: Technical Descriptions in the Wild

ABSTRACT

The genre of technical description is seeing a resurgence, particularly in online locations, where new, hybrid versions have emerged. The technical explanation, one such hybrid, proliferates on the social message board site Reddit and the message board “Explain Like I’m Five,” in which answers to complex questions are crowdsourced. This study examines 233 such questions and their answers, identifying the effort needed to generate technical explanations as distributed and coordinative technical communication work.

KEYWORDS:

• Collaboration
• design of communication
• documentation/help systems
• genre theory
• knowledge management
• workplace studies

Notes

1. See Swarts (2007) and Pigg (2014) for excellent examples of this model of research.

2. At times, Callon has identified what has become known as ANT by the different title of “Sociology of Translation.” See Callon (1980, 1981, 1986).

3. For complete ELI5 rules, and discussion of these rules, see (Reddit, n.d.-b).

4. Reddit also hosts several other locations for technical communication, though none as popular. There is a small community (394 users at the time of writing) in the subreddit “tech writing” (http://www.reddit.com/r/techwriting/), another even smaller subreddit “science communication” (https://www.reddit.com/r/sciencecommunication/), and a free online course “Intro into Technical Writing” was offered through the University of Reddit (http://universityofreddit.com/class/37402/intro-to-technical-writing), enrolled more than 800 students).

5. Choosing random explained and unexplained threads to study is a problem for ELI5 because there are many more unexplained questions than explained ones. Questions also go unexplained because not enough people have seen them or attempted an answer. A random sampling would result in robust numbers for explained threads, but much, much lower numbers for unexplained threads—and any comparison of how answers are generated would be difficult due to the sheer difference in available answers.

6. Points = upvotes minus downvotes (aggregate positive numbers in all cases in this study)

Best = most upvoted comments with the least downvotes amongst posts in the subreddit

Top = highest raw upvote scored comments

Hot = popular right now

7. The rationale for looking at answers to questions with a minimum number of aggregate votes is complex. Reddit’s voting makes many of the posts in ELI5 a moving target—that is, votes can change in number from 1 second to the next, if a thread is still active and had not been archived (or if voting has not been locked for some other reason). This data collection took place on November 14, 2015 and represents a snapshot of what Reddit looked like at a given time.

8. It is also possible that longer answers are more frequently marked as explained, though the data gathered here does not support this claim.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ehren Helmut Pflugfelder

Ehren Helmut Pflugfelder is an assistant professor at Oregon State University, where he teaches courses in rhetoric, new media, and technical and science writing. His research has appeared in journals such as Technical Communication, the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Kairos, and Rhetoric Society Quarterly, and he is the author of Communicating Mobility and Technology: A Material Rhetoric for Transportation (Routledge).