Differentiating Communication Styles of Leaders on the Linux Kernel Mailing List

Schneider, Daniel; Spurlock, Scott; Squire, Megan

doi:10.1145/2957792.2957801

Cited by 18 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Previous study identified that open source contributors might have different communication styles; some may have negative impacts. For example, a Naive Bayes classifier identified that the leaders of the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML) have different communication styles (F1-score = 0.96) [48]; some used more impolite, rude, aggressive, or offensive words. Offensive language (defined as "communication that contains gutter language, swearing, racist, or offensive content") can also be identified in other platforms such as GitHub, Gitter, Slack, and Stack Overflow, with more than 97% of accuracy using BERT [6].…”

Section: Automated Detection Of Unhealthy Discussion In Soft-mentioning

confidence: 99%

Incivility Detection in Open Source Code Review and Issue Discussions

Ferreira¹,

Rafiq

Cheng³

2022

SSRN Journal

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Section: Automated Detection Of Unhealthy Discussion In Soft-mentioning

confidence: 99%

Incivility Detection in Open Source Code Review and Issue Discussions

Ferreira¹,

Rafiq

Cheng³

2022

SSRN Journal

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“…Egelman et al [36] focus on pushback, defined as "the perception of unnecessary interpersonal conflict in code review while a reviewer is blocking a change request." Other studies focus on specific aspects related to conflicts such as unfair treatment [42], and profanity and insults [70,72] during code review. Empirical findings by German et al [42] indicate that the majority of contributors to OpenStack, a large industrial OSS ecosystem, have experience with unfair treatment during code review.…”

Section: Social Code Review and Conflictsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Data and Material for 'Interpersonal Conflicts During Code Review'

Wurzel Gonçalves,

Calikli,

Bacchelli

2022

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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.5848794 CCS Concepts: • Software and its engineering → Collaboration in software development; Software development process management.

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“…The "Shut the f**k up" Phenomenon: Characterizing Incivility in Open Source Code Review Discussions suffer from stress and burnout facing toxic interactions [53]. Furthermore, previous work has found that there are quantifiable differences in the communication patterns between leaders of the Linux kernel community, in which some people often use words such as thanks and sorry, while other people use rude and offensive words [57]. To help address the effects of negative communication, Tan and Zhou [65] identified 17 strategies as effective practices for communication when submitting a patch to LKML.…”

Section: Incivilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We collected code review emails from the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML) in the period between January 2018 and March 2019. We chose to study the Linux community because they have a diverse and large number of contributors with different communication styles [57] as well as a large number of daily discussions [17]. Furthermore, we chose to analyze the aforementioned period because it was a period with several controversies and potential for incivility due to Linus Torvalds' temporary break from his maintainer role [59], as well as when the code of conduct was established in the Linux kernel community.…”

Section: Collecting Code Review Emailsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The "Shut the f**k up" Phenomenon: Characterizing Incivility in Open Source Code Review Discussions

Ferreira,

Cheng,

Adams

2021

Preprint

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Code review is an important quality assurance activity for software development. Code review discussions among developers and maintainers can be heated and sometimes involve personal attacks and unnecessary disrespectful comments, demonstrating, therefore, incivility. Although incivility in public discussions has received increasing attention from researchers in different domains, the knowledge about the characteristics, causes, and consequences of uncivil communication is still very limited in the context of software development, and more specifically, code review. To address this gap in the literature, we leverage the mature social construct of incivility as a lens to understand confrontational conflicts in open source code review discussions. For that, we conducted a qualitative analysis on 1,545 emails from the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML) that were associated with rejected changes. We found that more than half (66.66%) of the non-technical emails included uncivil features. Particularly, frustration, name calling, and impatience are the most frequent features in uncivil emails. We also found that there are civil alternatives to address arguments, while uncivil comments can potentially be made by any people when discussing any topic. Finally, we identified various causes and consequences of such uncivil communication. Our work serves as the first study about the phenomenon of in(civility) in open source software development, paving the road for a new field of research about collaboration and communication in the context of software engineering activities. CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in collaborative and social computing; • Software and its engineering → Open source model.

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Differentiating Communication Styles of Leaders on the Linux Kernel Mailing List

Cited by 18 publications

References 9 publications

Incivility Detection in Open Source Code Review and Issue Discussions

Incivility Detection in Open Source Code Review and Issue Discussions

Data and Material for 'Interpersonal Conflicts During Code Review'

The "Shut the f**k up" Phenomenon: Characterizing Incivility in Open Source Code Review Discussions

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