GitHub Developers Use Rockstars to Overcome Overflow of News

Michael J. Lee, Bruce Ferwerda, Junghong Choi, Jungpil Hahn, Jae Yun Moon, Jinwoo Kim

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

27 Scopus citations

Abstract

Keeping track of a constantly updating stream of news items on social networking enabled software development sites may be difficult. We analyzed the actions of 544 GitHub.com developers working across 5,657 projects to examine how the network of developers and projects influence where developers choose to contribute. Our analyses revealed the existence of a group of extremely well connected developers, or rockstars. We found that these rockstars’: 1) actions have a greater influence on their followers compared to regular developers, 2) type of action affect their followers differently, 3) influence on followers may depend on a project’s age, 4) increased activity on a project increases activity by followers, and 5) followers use as guides to projects to work on. We discuss the implications of these findings to the design of software development environments.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationCHI EA 2013 - Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Subtitle of host publicationChanging Perspectives
EditorsMichel Beaudouin-Lafon, Patrick Baudisch, Wendy E. Mackay
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Pages133-138
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781450318990
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 27 2013
Externally publishedYes
Event31st Annual CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems:, CHI EA 2013 - Paris, France
Duration: Apr 27 2013May 2 2013

Publication series

NameConference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
Volume2013-April

Other

Other31st Annual CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems:, CHI EA 2013
Country/TerritoryFrance
CityParis
Period4/27/135/2/13

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Software
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design

Keywords

  • GitHub
  • Open source
  • Social coding
  • Social computing

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