Shocking the Crowd: The Effect of Censorship Shocks on Chinese Wikipedia

Collaborative crowdsourcing has become a popular approach to organizing work across the globe. Being global also means being vulnerable to shocks -- unforeseen events that disrupt crowds -- that originate from any country. In this study, we examine changes in collaborative behavior of editors of Chinese Wikipedia that arise due to the 2005 government censor- ship in mainland China. Using the exogenous variation in the fraction of editors blocked across different articles due to the censorship, we examine the impact of reduction in group size, which we denote as the shock level, on three collaborative behavior measures: volume of activity, centralization, and conflict. We find that activity and conflict drop on articles that face a shock, whereas centralization increases. The impact of a shock on activity increases with shock level, whereas the impact on centralization and conflict is higher for moderate shock levels than for very small or very high shock levels. These findings provide support for threat rigidity theory -- originally introduced in the organizational theory literature -- in the context of large-scale collaborative crowds

Welcome? Investigating the reception of new contributors to organizational-communal open source software projects

The way new contributors are received by the established contributors in an open source project is a factor in whether they will become more regular contributors. This research examines the reception of new contributors in three open source projects to discover whether there are differences in how established contributors respond to new contributors, and if so, what those differences are. Through statistical analysis of time to first response and sentiment analysis of that response to a new contributor’s issue, we found that there is a difference in both the speed and content of responses to new contributors’ issues as opposed to those of established contributors. This difference suggests that the open source projects we observed are attentive to whether an issue was created by a new contributor and may make an effort to respond in a welcoming manner

Eight Observations and 24 Research Questions About Open Source Projects: Illuminating New Realities

The rapid acceleration of corporate engagement with open source projects is drawing out new ways for CSCW researchers to consider the dynamics of these projects. Research must now consider the complex ecosystems within which open source projects are situated, including issues of for-profit motivations, brokering foundations, and corporate collaboration. Localized project considerations cannot reveal broader workings of an open source ecosystem, yet much empirical work is constrained to a local context. In response, we present eight observations from our eight-year engaged field study about the changing nature of open source projects. We ground these observations through 24 research questions that serve as primers to spark research ideas in this new reality of open source projects. This paper contributes to CSCW in social and crowd computing by delivering a rich and fresh look at corporately-engaged open source projects with a call for renewed focus and research into newly emergent areas of interest

The Impact of Anonymous Peripheral Contributions on Open Source Software Development

Online peer production communities such as open source software (OSS) projects attract both identified and anonymous peripheral contributions (APC) (e.g., defect reports, feature requests, or forum posts). While we can attribute identified peripheral contributions (IPC) to specific individuals and OSS projects need them to succeed, one cannot trace back anonymous peripheral contributions (APC), and they can have both positive and negative ramifications for project development. Open platforms and managers face a challenging design choice in deciding whether to allow APC and for which tasks or what type of projects. We examine the impact that the ratio between APC and IPC has on OSS project performance. Our results suggest that the OSS projects perform the best when they contain a uniform anonymity level (i.e., they contain predominantly APC or predominantly IPC). However, our results also suggest that OSS projects have lower performance when the ratio between APC and IPC nears one (i.e., they contain close to the same number of APC and IPC). Furthermore, our results suggest that these results differ depending on the type of application that a project develops. Our study contributes to the ongoing debate about the implications of anonymity for online communities and informs managers about the effect that anonymous contributions have on their projects

Interpersonal Conflicts During Code Review

Code review consists of manual inspection, discussion, and judgment of source code by developers other than the code's author. Due to discussions around competing ideas and group decision-making processes, interpersonal conflicts during code reviews are expected. This study systematically investigates how developers perceive code review conflicts and addresses interpersonal conflicts during code reviews as a theoretical construct. Through the thematic analysis of interviews conducted with 22 developers, we confirm that conflicts during code reviews are commonplace, anticipated and seen as normal by developers. Even though conflicts do happen and carry a negative impact for the review, conflicts-if resolved constructively-can also create value and bring improvement. Moreover, the analysis provided insights on how strongly conflicts during code review and its context (i.e., code, developer, team, organization) are intertwined. Finally, there are aspects specific to code review conflicts that call for the research and application of customized conflict resolution and management techniques, some of which are discussed in this paper. Data and material: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.584879

Problèmes de santé des écosystèmes logiciels ouverts : une étude exploratoire auprès d'experts de la pratique

Aujourd’hui, les logiciels libres ou open source sont de plus en plus utilisés et peuvent servir dans certains cas de base de développement de logiciels « non libres » ou propriétaires. Le noyau Linux est utilisé par exemple pour aider dans le développement de plusieurs plateformes et logiciels comme Windows et iOS. Le succès des logiciels open source émane du fait que, contrairement aux logiciels propriétaires, les logiciels open source sont développés dans des projets qui s’appuient sur des communautés. Les projets et leurs communautés sont compris dans des environnements plus larges appelés écosystème logiciel ouvert (ECLOO). Toutefois, ces ECLOOs font face à de nombreuses difficultés pouvant nuire à leur santé ou leur bonne marche. Le projet SECOHealth a été initié dans le but de comprendre la santé des écosystèmes logiciels afin de proposer des catalogues de lignes directrices et des outils de recommandation pour pouvoir mesurer et contrôler cette santé. La recherche décrite dans ce document est une partie du projet SECOHealth. Cette recherche a pour objectif de mieux appréhender la santé des ECLOOs pour pouvoir mesurer et contrôler cette santé. Pour ce faire, nous répondrons aux trois questions de recherche suivantes : 1. Quels sont les principaux problèmes auxquels font face les ECLOOs? 2. Quelles sont les principales causes de ces problèmes? 3. Quels sont les principaux impacts de ces problèmes? Pour répondre à ces questions, nous avons mené des entrevues individuelles auprès de dix experts évoluant dans les ECLOOs. L’analyse des données recueillies nous a permis de construire les diagrammes d’analyse causale sur la base de chaque entrevue, ainsi que les chaînes causales des principaux problèmes observés. Les résultats montrent que les principaux problèmes de santé observés, leurs causes et impacts relèvent aussi bien du domaine technique que de domaines non-techniques tel la gestion.Nowadays, open source software are increasingly used and can become in some cases the basis to develop commercial or proprietary software. For example, the Linux kernel is used in developing several platforms and software like Windows and iOS. The success of open source software stems from the fact that, unlike proprietary software, open source software are developed in projects that rely on communities. Projects and their communities are included in broader environments called open source software ecosystems (OSSECOs). However, these OSSECOs face many difficulties that can affect their health or their proper functioning. The SECOHealth project was initiated with the aim of understanding the health of software ecosystems in order to propose catalogs of guidelines and recommendation tools for measuring and controlling this health. The research described in this document is part of the SECOHealth project. This research aims to better understand the health of open software ecosystems in order to be able to measure and control it. To do this, we will answer the following three research questions: 1. What are the main problems facing OSSECOs? 2. What are the main causes of these problems? 3. What are the main impacts of these problems? To answer these questions, we conducted one-on-one interviews with ten experts in OSSECOs. Analysis of the data collected allowed us to construct the causal analysis diagrams and the causal chains of the main problems observed. The results show that the main health problems, their causes and their impacts fall within the technical domain as well as non-technical domains such as the management