Supplementary Material for "Challenges of Mining Solution Snippets from Stack Overflow: A Taxonomy to Guide Reusability"

Stack Overflow is the de facto standard for finding answers to programming problems, many of which include code snippets in the solutions. Unfortunately, it is not always easy for developers to identify a reusable code snippet that solves a specific programming problem as the answers provided on Stack Overflow often contain fixes and source code that only apply in a specific context, and can include a variety of other content, such as examples of how to use the code. Some answers even include incorrect ways to solve a problem. In this paper, we explore the reusability of what we call Solution Snippets to help developers find solutions to their problems. As part of this work, we conducted an empirical study to first understand the characteristics of questions that would typically be answered with a Solution Snippet, and then to understand the characteristics of Solution Snippets themselves and how they may be reused by developers. Through an exploratory study of 598 Stack Overflow answers, we: (1) identify the characteristics of questions that need to be addressed with a Solution Snippet (how-to questions); (2) identify how Solution Snippets are presented in the answers to those questions; (3) classify Solution Snippets according to their reusability; and (4) provide suggestions for Stack Overflow designers to improve the presentation of answers on Stack Overflow in a way that facilitates reusability and automatic extraction of the information.