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Much of our modern digital infrastructure relies critically upon open sourced software. The communities responsible for building this cyberinfrastructure require maintenance and moderation, which is often supported by volunteer efforts. Moderation, as a non-technical form of labor, is a necessary but often overlooked task that maintainers undertake to sustain the community around an OSS project. This study examines the various structures and norms that support community moderation, describes the strategies moderators use to mitigate conflicts, and assesses how bots can play a role in assisting these processes. We interviewed 14 practitioners to uncover existing moderation practices and ways that automation can provide assistance. Our main contributions include a characterization of moderated content in OSS projects, moderation techniques, as well as perceptions of and recommendations for improving the automation of moderation tasks. We hope that these findings will inform the implementation of more effective moderation practices in open source communities.
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Code of Conduct Conversations in Open Source Software Projects on Github
The rapid growth of open source software necessitates a deeper understanding of moderation and governance methods currently used within these projects. The code of conduct, a set of rules articulating standard behavior and responsibilities for participation within a community, is becoming an increasingly common policy document in open source software projects for setting project norms of behavior and discouraging negative or harassing comments and conversation. This study describes the conversations around adopting and crafting a code of conduct as well as those utilizing code of conduct for community governance. We conduct a qualitative analysis of a random sample of GitHub issues that involve the code of conduct. We find that codes of conduct are used both proactively and reactively to govern community behavior in project issues. Oftentimes, the initial addition of a code of conduct does not involve much community participation and input. However, a controversial moderation act is capable of inciting mass community feedback and backlash. Project maintainers balance the tension between disciplining potentially offensive forms of speech and encouraging broad and inclusive participation. These results have implications for the design of inclusive and effective governance practices for open source software communities.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2107298
- PAR ID:
- 10347026
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
- Volume:
- 5
- Issue:
- CSCW1
- ISSN:
- 2573-0142
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 31
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3449093
