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arXiv · 2603.19747

ConSearcher: Supporting Conversational Information Seeking in Online Communities with Member Personas

Shiwei Wu·Xinyue Chen·Yuheng Liu·Xingbo Wang·Qingyu Guo·Longfei Chen·Chuhan Shi·Zhenhui Peng
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Abstract

Many people browse online communities to learn from others' experiences and opinions, e.g., for constructing travel plans. Conversational search powered by large language models (LLMs) could ease this information-seeking task, but it remains under-investigated within the online community. In this paper, we first conducted an exploratory study (N=10) that indicated the helpfulness of a classic conversational search tool and identified room for improvement. Then, we proposed ConSearcher, an LLM-powered tool with dynamically generated member personas based on user queries to facilitate conversational search in the community. In ConSearcher, users can clarify their interests by checking what a simulated member similar to them may ask and get responses from diverse members' perspectives. A within-subjects study (N=27) showed that compared to two conversational search baselines, ConSearcher led to significantly higher information-seeking outcome and user engagement but raised concerns about over-personalization. We discuss implications for supporting conversational information seeking in online communities.

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Shiwei Wu, Xinyue Chen, Yuheng Liu, Xingbo Wang, Qingyu Guo, Longfei Chen, Chuhan Shi, Zhenhui Peng. 2026-05-03. ConSearcher: Supporting Conversational Information Seeking in Online Communities with Member Personas. https://doi.org/10.1145/3800645.3813049

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