Identifying Duplicate Questions

in Q&A Communities Using

Machine Learning

A Project Report Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree of Computer Science
Engineering

Submitted by:

Ishak Gauri (QID: 22030522)

Rahul Kumar (QID: )
Subhash Yadav (QID: 22030574)
Aayush Kumar Jha(QID:)
Mukul Sharma (QID: 23030191)

Submitted To:

Asst. Prof. Amit Kumar

Department of Computer Science Engineering
Quantum University, Roorkee, India
 Certificate

This is to certify that the work presented in this project report, entitled
”Identifying Duplicate Questions in Q&A Communities Using Machine
Learning” is the original work of Ishak Gauri, Rahul Kumar, Subhash Ya-
dav, Mukul Sharma and Aayush Kumar Jha . The project has been carried
out under my supervision and guidance as part of the requirements for the Bach-
elor of Technology (B. Tech) degree in Computer Science Engineering.

To the best of my knowledge, this work has not been submitted previously, in
part or in full, to any other university or institution for the award of any degree
or diploma. The research and implementation presented in this report adhere
to academic and ethical standards and contribute to advancements in natural
language processing and information retrieval.

I commend the candidates for their dedication, analytical approach, and con-
tributions to this field of study.

Under the Supervision of:

Asst. Prof. Amit Kumar

Department of Computer Science Engineering
Quantum University, Roorkee, India.
 Declaration

We, the undersigned, hereby declare that the project report titled ”Identify-
ing Duplicate Questions in Q&A Communities Using Machine Learn-
ing” is an original work carried out by us as part of the requirements for the Bach-
elor of Technology (B. Tech) degree in Computer Science Engineering at Quantum
University, Roorkee, India. This project was conducted under the supervision of
Asst. Prof. Amit Kumar and adheres to academic and ethical standards.

To the best of our knowledge, this work is free from any form of plagiarism and
has not been submitted, in part or in full, to any other institution or university
for the award of a degree or diploma. All sources of information, contributions,
and references have been duly acknowledged following proper citation norms.

We take full responsibility for the authenticity and integrity of the research
findings, methodologies, and conclusions presented in this report.

Submitted by:
Ishak Gauri (QID: 22030522)

Rahul Kumar (QID: 22030557)

Subhash Yadav (QID: 22030574)
Mukul Sharma (QID: 23030191)
Aayush Kumar Jha Department of Computer Science Engineering

Quantum University, Roorkee, India

 ABSTRACT

Online question-answering platforms, such as Quora and Stack Exchange, fre-

quently face the issue of duplicate questions, where users post different variations
of the same query. Detecting and managing these duplicates enhances user expe-
rience and ensures efficient information retrieval.
This study proposes a machine learning-based approach for duplicate question
detection using Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. The method fol-
lows a structured process comprising text preprocessing, feature extraction, word
embeddings, classification, and model evaluation to analyse semantic similarities
between question pairs.
To assess the effectiveness of the models, evaluation metrics such as accuracy,
precision, recall, and F1-score are utilized. The Quora Question Pairs dataset from
Kaggle serves as the primary dataset, providing real-world labelled question pairs.
Various preprocessing techniques, including tokenization, vectorization, and word
embeddings, are applied to enhance model performance.
Several classification models, including logistic regression, neural networks, and
other machine learning techniques, are compared to determine the most effective
approach. By selecting the best-performing model, this study aims to optimize
duplicate question detection, contributing to a more efficient knowledge-sharing
process.

Keywords: Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Duplicate Ques-

tion Detection, Feature Extraction, Quora Question Pairs Dataset.
Contents

1 Introduction 1
1.1 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.3 Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.4 Objectives of the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.5 Scope and Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.6 Organization of the Thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2 Literature Review 4
2.1 Summary of Existing Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1.1 Traditional Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1.2 Machine Learning Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1.3 Deep Learning Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2 Gaps in Current Knowledge / Existing Works . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.3 Justification for the Proposed Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

3 Implementation Methodology 7
3.1 Methodology Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2 Data Collection Methods/Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2.1 Primary Data Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2.2 Data Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.3 Tools and Techniques Used for Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.3.1 Machine Learning Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.3.2 Deep Learning Approaches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.3.3 Feature Extraction Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.4 System Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.4.1 Data Preprocessing Pipeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.4.2 Feature Extraction Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.4.3 Model Training and Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.5 Implementation Details and Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.5.1 Logistic Regression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.5.2 Support Vector Machine (SVM) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.5.3 Extreme Gradient Boosting (XG-Boost) . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.5.4 Siamese Manhattan LSTM (MALSTM) . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.5.5 Results and Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.5.6 Example Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

4 Expected Outcomes and Significance 14

4.1 Innovative Project Objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

4
CONTENTS 5

4.2 Significance and Impact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

4.2.1 Academic Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.2.2 Industrial Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.2.3 Societal Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.3 Future Research Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Identifying Duplicate Questions in Q&A Communities Using Machine Learning

List of Figures

3.1 Proposed System Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

3.2 Logistic Regression Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.3 SVM Hyperplane Visualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.4 Distribution of Unique vs Duplicate Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.5 Example of Duplicate Question Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

6
List of Tables

3.1 Dataset Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

3.2 Model Performance Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

7
Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1 Background
Community Question Answering (CQA) platforms facilitate knowledge sharing by
allowing users to post and answer questions. However, a common challenge these
platforms face is the presence of duplicate questions—queries that have already
been asked and answered. These redundancies create noise in the system, making
it difficult for users to retrieve relevant answers efficiently.
Programming Community Question Answering (PCQA) platforms, a special-
ized subset of CQA, focus on programming-related queries. Unlike general CQA
forums, PCQA contains not only natural language text but also programming code
snippets, making duplicate detection more complex. Traditional approaches to du-
plicate question detection in PCQA have primarily relied on supervised learning
techniques that analyse textual similarities. However, these methods often neglect
the structural and semantic differences between programming code and natural
language, limiting their effectiveness.
The presence of duplicate questions negatively impacts the efficiency of PCQA
platforms by increasing search complexity and leading to redundant discussions.
Existing methods predominantly extract textual features without considering programming-
specific elements, leading to suboptimal duplicate detection.
To address this gap, our research aims to introduce novel feature extraction
techniques that incorporate both textual and code-related characteristics. By inte-
grating deep learning based continuous word representations, probabilistic models
from information retrieval, and association pairs derived from machine transla-
tion, we seek to improve the accuracy of duplicate detection in PCQA platforms.

1.2 Motivation
The exponential growth of online Q&A platforms has created an unprecedented
volume of user-generated content. While this democratization of knowledge shar-
ing has numerous benefits, it has also introduced significant challenges in content
management and information retrieval. The primary motivation for this research
stems from several critical issues:

1
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 2

• Information Overload: Users often struggle to find relevant answers due

to the sheer volume of duplicate and near-duplicate questions.

• Resource Inefficiency: Duplicate questions lead to redundant efforts from

community members who answer the same questions multiple times.

• Search Degradation: The presence of duplicates dilutes search results and

makes it harder to locate authoritative answers.

• Community Fragmentation: Discussions get scattered across multiple

duplicate threads instead of being consolidated.

1.3 Applications
The proposed approach can be utilized in various domains, including:

• Enhancing search efficiency in PCQA platforms by reducing redundant queries

• Improving automated question-answering systems by filtering duplicate ques-

tions

• Assisting educators in identifying frequently asked programming questions

• Supporting research in text classification and feature extraction from mixed-

language content

• Developing recommendation systems for suggesting existing answers to new

questions

• Creating automated moderation tools for online communities

1.4 Objectives of the Study

The primary objectives of this study include:

1. Developing innovative features for duplicate question detection in PCQA

2. Leveraging deep learning and information retrieval techniques for improved

feature extraction

3. Conducting an empirical evaluation of different feature combinations and

learning models

4. Providing insights into optimizing duplicate detection in mixed-language

textual data

5. Implementing a practical system that can be deployed in real-world Q&A

platforms

6. Establishing benchmarks for future research in this domain

Identifying Duplicate Questions in Q&A Communities Using Machine Learning

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 3

1.5 Scope and Limitations

This study focuses on duplicate detection in PCQA platforms by integrating text-
based and code-based features. However, the research has certain limitations:

• The study primarily considers English-based PCQA platforms and does not
address multilingual challenges

• While the proposed features enhance detection accuracy, real-time deploy-

ment challenges remain outside the scope

• The evaluation is limited to publicly available datasets from major PCQA

websites

• Computational complexity and scalability issues for very large datasets are
not extensively addressed

• The study focuses on textual similarity and does not consider user behavior
patterns or temporal factors

1.6 Organization of the Thesis

This thesis is organized into the following chapters:

• Chapter 1: Introduction - Provides background, motivation, objectives,

and scope of the study

• Chapter 2: Literature Review - Surveys existing research and identifies

gaps in current knowledge

• Chapter 3: Implementation Methodology - Details the proposed approach,

system architecture, and implementation

• Chapter 4: Expected Outcomes and Significance - Discusses the antici-

pated results and their implications

• Bibliography: Lists all references and sources used in the research

Identifying Duplicate Questions in Q&A Communities Using Machine Learning

Chapter 2

Literature Review

2.1 Summary of Existing Research

Duplicate question detection is a critical problem in natural language processing
(NLP), aimed at identifying semantically similar questions to improve information
retrieval and user experience on Q&A platforms. Traditional approaches relied on
lexical similarity measures, such as Jaccard similarity and cosine similarity, to
compare question pairs. However, these methods were limited in capturing the
deeper semantic meaning of text.
Machine learning techniques have significantly improved duplicate question de-
tection. Early studies introduced feature engineering-based models, utilizing hand-
crafted features such as term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF),
word embeddings, and syntactic similarities. Support Vector Machines (SVM),
Random Forest, and Logistic Regression were among the initial classifiers used for
question similarity assessment.
With the rise of deep learning, neural network-based models have demonstrated
superior performance. Siamese networks, which use twin neural networks to com-
pare input question pairs, have been widely explored. Additionally, transformer-
based models like BERT and DistilBERT have achieved state-of-the-art results by
leveraging contextual embeddings. These advancements have enabled more accu-
rate detection of duplicate questions, surpassing traditional feature-based meth-
ods.

2.1.1 Traditional Approaches

Early research in duplicate question detection focused on lexical and syntactic
similarity measures:

• String-based Methods: Edit distance, longest common subsequence, and

n-gram overlap

• Vector Space Models: TF-IDF, cosine similarity, and Euclidean distance

• Linguistic Features: Part-of-speech tags, named entity recognition, and

syntactic parsing

4
CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW 5

2.1.2 Machine Learning Era

The introduction of machine learning brought significant improvements:

• Feature Engineering: Handcrafted features combining lexical, syntactic,

and semantic information

• Classical Classifiers: SVM, Naive Bayes, Random Forest, and Gradient

Boosting

• Ensemble Methods: Combining multiple classifiers for improved perfor-

mance

2.1.3 Deep Learning Revolution

Recent advances in deep learning have transformed the field:

• Word Embeddings: Word2Vec, GloVe, and FastText for semantic repre-

sentation

• Neural Networks: CNN, RNN, and LSTM for sequence modeling

• Attention Mechanisms: Self-attention and cross-attention for better align-

ment

• Transformer Models: BERT, RoBERTa, and their variants for contextual

understanding

2.2 Gaps in Current Knowledge / Existing Works

Despite the progress in machine learning-driven duplicate question detection, sev-
eral challenges remain unaddressed:

• Generalization across diverse datasets: Many existing models perform

well on benchmark datasets but struggle when applied to different Q&A
platforms due to variations in language style and domain-specific terminol-
ogy

• Data scarcity and annotation costs: Deep learning models require large-
scale labelled datasets, which are often expensive and time-consuming to
annotate manually

• Computational complexity: Transformer-based models, while highly ac-

curate, demand significant computational resources, making real-time im-
plementation challenging

• Model interpretability: Deep learning approaches, particularly neural

networks, function as black boxes, limiting their explainability and trust-
worthiness in decision-making applications

• Domain adaptation: Models trained on general datasets often fail to cap-

ture domain-specific nuances in specialized Q&A communities

Identifying Duplicate Questions in Q&A Communities Using Machine Learning

CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW 6

• Multilingual support: Most existing approaches focus on English text,

with limited support for multilingual question detection

2.3 Justification for the Proposed Research

Given the existing limitations, this research aims to develop an optimized duplicate
question detection approach that balances accuracy, efficiency, and interpretabil-
ity. The proposed work seeks to:

• Enhance model generalization by fine-tuning transformer-based architec-

tures with domain-specific embeddings

• Address data scarcity through semi-supervised and data augmentation tech-

niques to improve model robustness

• Improve computational efficiency by exploring knowledge distillation and

lightweight neural network architectures

• Incorporate explainability methods, such as attention visualization and fea-

ture attribution, to enhance model interpretability

• Develop a comprehensive feature engineering approach that combines tradi-

tional and modern techniques

• Create a scalable solution suitable for real-world deployment in Q&A plat-

forms

By tackling these challenges, the research aims to contribute to the develop-

ment of more effective and deployable duplicate question detection models, facili-
tating improved knowledge management in Q&A systems.

Identifying Duplicate Questions in Q&A Communities Using Machine Learning

Chapter 3

Implementation Methodology

3.1 Methodology Design

The research methodology adopted for this study follows a mixed-methods ap-
proach, integrating both qualitative and quantitative techniques. The quantita-
tive aspect involves statistical analysis and machine learning model evaluation,
whereas the qualitative approach focuses on text preprocessing and feature ex-
traction methods. This hybrid approach ensures a comprehensive understanding
of duplicate question detection.
The methodology consists of the following key phases:

1. Data Collection and Preprocessing

2. Feature Engineering and Extraction
3. Model Development and Training
4. Evaluation and Validation
5. Performance Analysis and Optimization

3.2 Data Collection Methods/Sources

The dataset used for this research comprises paired question data from Quora,
formatted in CSV (Comma-Separated Values). The dataset consists of multiple
question pairs labelled as either duplicate or non-duplicate. The data undergoes
preprocessing steps, including tokenization, stemming, stop-word removal, and
vectorization, to enhance its quality for analysis.

3.2.1 Primary Data Sources

• Quora Question Pairs Dataset: Publicly available question-pair datasets
from Quora containing over 400,000 question pairs
• Stack Overflow Data: Programming-specific question pairs for domain
adaptation
• Yahoo Answers: Additional question pairs for cross-platform validation

7
CHAPTER 3. IMPLEMENTATION METHODOLOGY 8

3.2.2 Data Characteristics

Table 3.1: Dataset Statistics

Metric Training Set Test Set

Total Question Pairs 404,290 2,345,796
Duplicate Pairs 149,263 (36.9%) -
Non-duplicate Pairs 255,027 (63.1%) -
Average Question Length 11.06 words -
Vocabulary Size 95,603 unique words -

3.3 Tools and Techniques Used for Analysis

Several machine learning algorithms and deep learning techniques are employed
to detect duplicate questions efficiently. The methodologies implemented include:

3.3.1 Machine Learning Algorithms

• Logistic Regression: A statistical model used for binary classification,
applied to determine question similarity

• Support Vector Machine (SVM): A supervised learning model that clas-

sifies question pairs using hyperplane separation

• Extreme Gradient Boosting (XG-Boost): An ensemble learning method

that enhances accuracy by optimizing decision trees

• Random Forest: An ensemble method that combines multiple decision

trees for robust classification

3.3.2 Deep Learning Approaches

• Siamese Manhattan LSTM (MALSTM): A deep learning-based ap-
proach that captures semantic similarities between questions by employing
LSTM networks

• Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN): For capturing local patterns

in text

• Bidirectional LSTM: For better context understanding in both directions

3.3.3 Feature Extraction Methods

• TF-IDF: Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency for statistical text
analysis

• Word2Vec: Dense vector representations of words

• GloVe: Global Vectors for Word Representation

Identifying Duplicate Questions in Q&A Communities Using Machine Learning

CHAPTER 3. IMPLEMENTATION METHODOLOGY 9

• Cosine Similarity: For measuring semantic similarity between question

vectors

• Word Mover’s Distance: For semantic distance calculation

• Fuzzy String Matching: For lexical similarity assessment

The experimental results are visualized using Python-based libraries, including

Matplotlib and Seaborn, to provide graphical representations of algorithm perfor-
mance.

3.4 System Architecture

To achieve efficient duplicate question detection, the problem is divided into three
primary stages:

Figure 3.1: Proposed System Architecture

3.4.1 Data Preprocessing Pipeline

The preprocessing pipeline consists of several stages:

1. Text Cleaning: Removal of HTML tags, special characters, and noise

2. Normalization: Converting text to lowercase and handling contractions

3. Tokenization: Splitting text into individual tokens

Identifying Duplicate Questions in Q&A Communities Using Machine Learning

CHAPTER 3. IMPLEMENTATION METHODOLOGY 10

4. Stop Word Removal: Filtering out common words that don’t contribute
to meaning

5. Lemmatization: Reducing words to their base forms

6. Feature Engineering: Creating numerical features from processed text

3.4.2 Feature Extraction Module

The feature extraction module generates multiple types of features:

• Basic Features: Question length, word count, character count

• Lexical Features: Common words, word overlap ratios

• Syntactic Features: POS tags, dependency parsing results

• Semantic Features: Word embeddings, sentence embeddings

• Similarity Features: Cosine similarity, Jaccard similarity, fuzzy ratios

3.4.3 Model Training and Evaluation

The final stage involves:

• Model Training: Using various algorithms with cross-validation

• Hyperparameter Tuning: Grid search and random search optimization

• Model Evaluation: Using multiple metrics for comprehensive assessment

• Model Selection: Choosing the best performing model based on validation

results

3.5 Implementation Details and Results

3.5.1 Logistic Regression
Logistic Regression is a classification algorithm used for predicting discrete out-
comes. In this study, it helps determine whether two questions are duplicates
or not based on extracted textual features. The logistic function transforms the
model’s output into probability values.

Identifying Duplicate Questions in Q&A Communities Using Machine Learning

CHAPTER 3. IMPLEMENTATION METHODOLOGY 11

Figure 3.2: Logistic Regression Results

Performance Metrics:
• Accuracy: 78.2%
• Precision: 0.76
• Recall: 0.74
• F1-Score: 0.75

3.5.2 Support Vector Machine (SVM)

Support Vector Machine (SVM) is a supervised learning algorithm used for classi-
fication tasks. It works by finding the optimal hyperplane that separates different
classes efficiently.

Figure 3.3: SVM Hyperplane Visualization

Performance Metrics:

Identifying Duplicate Questions in Q&A Communities Using Machine Learning

CHAPTER 3. IMPLEMENTATION METHODOLOGY 12

• Accuracy: 81.5%

• Precision: 0.79

• Recall: 0.78

• F1-Score: 0.785

3.5.3 Extreme Gradient Boosting (XG-Boost)

XG-Boost is an advanced gradient boosting algorithm optimized for performance
and computational efficiency. It enhances classification accuracy through iterative
improvements in decision tree structures.
Performance Metrics:

• Accuracy: 84.3%

• Precision: 0.82

• Recall: 0.81

• F1-Score: 0.815

3.5.4 Siamese Manhattan LSTM (MALSTM)

The Siamese Manhattan LSTM model uses twin LSTM networks to process ques-
tion pairs and compute their semantic similarity using Manhattan distance.
Performance Metrics:

• Accuracy: 87.1%

• Precision: 0.85

• Recall: 0.84

• F1-Score: 0.845

3.5.5 Results and Discussion

We illustrate experimental results of different approaches on the dataset in this
part and the average value of measures are presented.

Table 3.2: Model Performance Comparison

Model Accuracy Precision Recall F1-Score

Logistic Regression 78.2% 0.76 0.74 0.75
SVM 81.5% 0.79 0.78 0.785
XG-Boost 84.3% 0.82 0.81 0.815
Siamese LSTM 87.1% 0.85 0.84 0.845

Identifying Duplicate Questions in Q&A Communities Using Machine Learning

CHAPTER 3. IMPLEMENTATION METHODOLOGY 13

Figure 3.4: Distribution of Unique vs Duplicate Questions

In the graph, you can see that the unique questions are more compared to
repeated questions, which reflects the natural distribution in Q&A platforms.

3.5.6 Example Analysis

Figure 3.5: Example of Duplicate Question Detection

The example shows how the system successfully identifies duplicate questions even
when they are phrased differently, demonstrating the effectiveness of semantic
similarity detection.

Identifying Duplicate Questions in Q&A Communities Using Machine Learning

Chapter 4

Expected Outcomes and Significance

4.1 Innovative Project Objectives

The primary objective of this research is to develop an efficient duplicate question
detection system utilizing machine learning and deep learning techniques. The
study aims to achieve the following:

• Enhanced Accuracy in Duplicate Detection: Implement and com-

pare multiple algorithms such as Logistic Regression, SVM, XG-Boost, and
Siamese Manhattan LSTM to improve detection accuracy

• Optimized Feature Extraction: Utilize advanced text representation

techniques such as TF-IDF, Word2Vec, and Cosine Similarity to enhance
the understanding of question semantics

• Robust Preprocessing Pipeline: Develop an efficient preprocessing pipeline

involving tokenization, stemming, and stop-word removal to improve the
quality of textual data

• Comparative Analysis of Techniques: Evaluate traditional machine

learning models against deep learning-based methods to determine the most
effective approach for duplicate question identification

• Visualization of Model Performance: Use Python-based libraries such

as Matplotlib and Seaborn to present algorithm performance metrics for
better interpretability

• Real-World Application: Provide a scalable solution that can be inte-

grated into online question-answering platforms to minimize redundancy and
enhance user experience

This research contributes to the field of natural language processing (NLP)

by providing insights into effective duplicate detection methodologies and their
practical applications.

14
CHAPTER 4. EXPECTED OUTCOMES AND SIGNIFICANCE 15

4.2 Significance and Impact

4.2.1 Academic Contributions
• Novel Feature Engineering: Introduction of comprehensive feature sets
that combine lexical, syntactic, and semantic information

• Comparative Analysis: Systematic evaluation of multiple machine learn-

ing approaches for duplicate question detection

• Benchmark Establishment: Creation of performance benchmarks for fu-

ture research in this domain

• Methodology Framework: Development of a reusable framework for sim-

ilar NLP tasks

4.2.2 Industrial Applications

• Platform Optimization: Direct application in Q&A platforms like Quora,
Stack Overflow, and Reddit

• Search Enhancement: Improvement of search algorithms in knowledge

management systems

• Content Moderation: Automated tools for content curation and duplicate

removal

• User Experience: Enhanced user satisfaction through reduced redundancy

and improved content discovery

4.2.3 Societal Benefits

• Knowledge Accessibility: Improved access to relevant information through
better organization

• Educational Support: Enhanced learning experiences in online educa-

tional platforms

• Research Facilitation: Better tools for researchers to find relevant infor-

mation quickly

• Community Building: Stronger online communities through improved

content quality

4.3 Future Research Directions

Based on the findings of this study, several avenues for future research emerge:

• Multilingual Support: Extending the approach to handle multiple lan-

guages and cross-lingual question detection

Identifying Duplicate Questions in Q&A Communities Using Machine Learning

CHAPTER 4. EXPECTED OUTCOMES AND SIGNIFICANCE 16

• Real-time Processing: Developing optimized algorithms for real-time du-

plicate detection in high-traffic platforms

• Domain Adaptation: Customizing models for specific domains like med-

ical, legal, or technical Q&A platforms

• Contextual Understanding: Incorporating user context and historical

data for better duplicate detection

• Explainable AI: Developing interpretable models that can explain why

questions are considered duplicates

• Active Learning: Implementing systems that can learn from user feedback
to improve detection accuracy

4.4 Conclusion
This research presents a comprehensive approach to duplicate question detection
in Q&A communities using machine learning techniques. Through systematic
evaluation of multiple algorithms and feature extraction methods, we have demon-
strated the effectiveness of combining traditional machine learning with modern
deep learning approaches.
The Siamese Manhattan LSTM model achieved the highest performance with
87.1% accuracy, followed by XG-Boost with 84.3% accuracy. These results indicate
that deep learning models, particularly those designed for similarity detection, are
well-suited for this task.
The developed system provides a practical solution for Q&A platforms to au-
tomatically identify and manage duplicate questions, thereby improving user ex-
perience and platform efficiency. The comprehensive feature engineering approach
and systematic evaluation methodology contribute to the broader field of natural
language processing and information retrieval.
Future work will focus on extending the approach to handle multilingual con-
tent, improving real-time performance, and developing more interpretable models
for better user trust and adoption.

Identifying Duplicate Questions in Q&A Communities Using Machine Learning

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Identifying Duplicate Questions in Q&A Communities Using Machine Learning