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We present a methodological approach, called Group Informatics, for understanding the social connections that are created between members of technologically mediated groups. Our methodological approach supports focused thinking about how online groups differ from each other, and diverge from their face-to-face counterparts. Group Informatics is grounded in 5 years of empirical studies of technologically mediated groups in online learning, software engineering, online political discourse, crisis informatics, and other domains. We describe the Group Informatics model and the related, 2-phase methodological approach in detail. Phase one of the methodological approach centers on a set of guiding research questions aimed at directing the application of Group Informatics to new corpora of integrated electronic trace data and qualitative research data. Phase 2 of the methodological approach is a systematic set of steps for transforming electronic trace data into weighted social networks.

A few studies have attempted to provide metrics of success in open source software (OSS) projects but the role a code hosting workspace plays in how performance is viewed and measured is little examined. We conducted qualitative, exploratory research with lead and core developers on three successful projects on GitHub to understand how OSS communities on GitHub measure success. These results were obtained in connection with a larger project that is designed to understand the structure of code hosting platforms in relation to participation and performance. We report two main findings. First, lead and core members of the projects we interviewed display a nuanced understanding of community participation in their assessment of success. Second, they attribute increased participation on their projects to the features and usability provided by GitHub.

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