Exploring reddit forum for software evolution as an alternative requirements source: An end-user discussion dataset on Google maps

Abstract

For software development and evolution, end-user feedback from app stores and the Twitter (X) platform has been intensively used recently. However, Reddit forums that provide an argumentative platform to argue and reason about various software features and issues have been less likely to be explored for software evolution and improvement in the literature. Therefore, this study explores Reddit forums as an alternative source for software evolution compared to App Stores, Twitter (X), and Amazon reviews. For this purpose, a Python script is developed to extract end-user discussions related to the Google Maps (GM) app from Reddit forums using Python Praw API, keep the original argumentative structure in user discussions. In total, 3119 end-user discussions from seven related topics about the GMM app are extracted for software evolution. This dataset includes detailed end-user feedback and associated metadata, including Comments ID, Parent ID, author names, timestamps, and upvotes. This dataset is a crucial and valuable resource for software vendors, developers, researchers, and educationists to improve their understanding of identifying new features to include in upcoming app versions. Also, it is of pivotal importance in better understanding recently occurring issues, unlike app stores where user debate on it and provide their justifications. Moreover, the replication package and process of the dataset can enable software researchers, vendors, and developers to extract data from the Reddit forum and use it for the software evolution and improvement process.