Category Archives: Research Contributions

Before the Sense of ‘We’: Identity Work as a Bridge from Mass Collaboration to Group Emergence

Conference Contributions, Full Research Papers, OpenSym 2017, Proceedings, Research Contributions

Title: Before the Sense of ‘We’: Identity Work as a Bridge from Mass Collaboration to Group Emergence

Authors: Arto Lanamaki:Interact Research Unit, University of Oulu; Juho Lindman:University of Gothenburg / Chalmers

Abstract: Individuals engaged in mass collaboration in Wikipedia may join to work recurrently with the same partners. It may well be that a significant portion of Wikipedia content is produced this way. Therefore, it is important to study how such groups emerge. In this paper, we argue how such recurrence may involve identity work that creates a sense of ‘we-ness.’ We provide a case from Wikipedia, focusing on how individual Wikipedians came together to work on a collaborative Feature Article task. Furthermore, the same people came together in other content collaborations, and they identified themselves as a group. The findings suggest that identity work can bridge mass collaborations to the emergence of smaller-scale sustained groups. Our theoretical contribution brings together research streams on mass collaboration, group dynamics, and identity. This offers interesting pathways for further research.

Download: This contribution is part of the OpenSym 2017 proceedings and is available as a PDF file.

An end-to-end learning solution for assessing quality of Wikipedia articles

Conference Contributions, Full Research Papers, OpenSym 2017, Proceedings, Research Contributions

Title: An end-to-end learning solution for assessing quality of Wikipedia articles

Authors: Quang-Vinh Dang:University de Lorraine; Claudia-Lavinia Ignat:INRIA

Abstract: Wikipedia is considered as the largest knowledge repository in the history of humanity and plays a crucial role in modern daily life. Assigning the correct quality class to Wikipedia articles is an important task in order to provide guidance for both authors and readers of Wikipedia. The manual review cannot cope with the editing speed of Wikipedia. An automatic classification is required to classify the quality of Wikipedia articles. Most existing approaches rely on traditional machine learning with manual feature engineering, which requires a lot of expertise and effort. Furthermore, it is known that there is no general perfect feature set because information leak always occurs in feature extraction phase. Also, for each language of Wikipedia, a new feature set is required.

In this paper, we present an approach relying on deep learning for quality classification of Wikipedia articles. Our solution relies on Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN) which is an end-to-end learning technique that eliminates disadvantages of feature engineering. Our approach learns directly from raw data without human intervention and is language-neutral. Experimental results on English, French and Russian Wikipedia datasets show that our approach outperforms state-of-the-art solutions.

Download: This contribution is part of the OpenSym 2017 proceedings and is available as a PDF file.

How are Open Source Practices Possible within a Medical Diagnostics Company? Developing and Testing a Maturity Model of Inner Source Implementation

Conference Contributions, Full Research Papers, OpenSym 2017, Proceedings, Research Contributions

Title: How are Open Source Practices Possible within a Medical Diagnostics Company? Developing and Testing a Maturity Model of Inner Source Implementation

Authors: Remo Eckert:University of Bern; Sathya Kay Meyer:University of Bern; Matthias Stuermer:University of Bern

Abstract: Open Source Software (OSS) development has seen a considerable increase in attention over the last few years. The success of various OSS projects, such as Linux and Apache, is now widely recognized. Many organizations have shown interest not only in using OSS, but also in applying the underlying collaborative practices within their internal software development activities; this phenomenon is known as Inner Source. By combining best practices of OSS development from the current Inner Source literature, we develop a new model that allows us to rate an organization’s maturity level regarding the adoption of Inner Source. By testing our model within a medical diagnostics corporation, we present various insights on Inner Source efforts and how Inner Source can improve software development.

Download: This contribution is part of the OpenSym 2017 proceedings and is available as a PDF file.

On the Relationship between Newcomer Motivations and Contribution Barriers in Open Source Projects

Conference Contributions, Full Research Papers, OpenSym 2017, Proceedings, Research Contributions

Title: On the Relationship between Newcomer Motivations and Contribution Barriers in Open Source Projects

Authors: Christoph Hannebauer:Universitat Duisburg-Essen; Volker Gruhn:Universitat Duisburg-Essen

Abstract: There has been extensive research on the the factors that motivate software developers to contribute to an Open Source Software (OSS) project. Contribution barriers are the counterside to motivations and prevent newcomers from joining the OSS project. This study searches for relations between motivations and contribution barriers with a web-based survey of 117 developers who had recently contributed their first patch to either Mozilla or GNOME.

The results substantiate the hypothesis that newcomers’ motivations mirror their mental models of the OSS project they are going to contribute to, and that the mental model determines the impact of contribution barriers. More generally, we propose a new model for the joining process to an OSS project that takes social properties, motivations, and contribution barriers
into account.

Download: This contribution is part of the OpenSym 2017 proceedings and is available as a PDF file.

What do Wikidata and Wikipedia have in common? An analysis of their use of external references

Conference Contributions, Full Research Papers, OpenSym 2017, Proceedings, Research Contributions

Title: What do Wikidata and Wikipedia have in common? An analysis of their use of external references

Authors: Alessandro Piscopo:University of Southampton; Pavlos Vougiouklis:University of Southampton; Lucie-Aimee Kaffee:University of Southampton; Christopher Phethean:University of Southampton; Jonathon Hare:University of Southampton; Elena Simperl:University of Southampton

Abstract: Wikidata is a community-driven knowledge graph, strongly linked to Wikipedia. However, the connection between the two projects has been sporadically explored. We investigated the relationship between the two projects in terms of the information they contain by looking at their external references. Our findings show that while only a small number of sources is directly reused across Wikidata and Wikipedia, references often point to the same domain. Furthermore, Wikidata appears to use less Anglo-American-centred sources. These results deserve further in-depth investigation.

Download: This contribution is part of the OpenSym 2017 proceedings and is available as a PDF file.

Determining the Geographical distribution of a Community by means of a Time-zone Analysis

Announcement, Conference Contributions, F/L/OSS Track, OpenSym 2016, Proceedings, Research Contributions, Research Tracks, Short Research Papers

Title: Determining the Geographical distribution of a Community by means of a Time-zone Analysis

Authors: Jesus M. Gonzalez-Barahona, Gregorio Robles (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos) and Daniel Izquierdo-Cortazar (Bitergia)

Abstract: Free/libre/open source software projects are usually developed by a geographically distributed community of developers and contributors. In contrast to traditional corporate environments, it is hard to obtain information about how the community is geographically distributed, mainly because participation is open to volunteers and in many cases it is just occasional. During the last years, specially with the increasing implication of institutions, non-profit organizations and companies, there is a growing interest in having information about the geographic location of developers. This is because projects want to be as global as possible, in order to attract new contributors, users and, of course, clients. In this paper we show a methodology to obtain the geographical distribution of a development community by analyzing the source code management system and the mailing lists they use.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.

Monitoring the Gender Gap with Wikidata Human Gender Indicators

Announcement, Conference Contributions, Full Research Papers, OpenSym 2016, Proceedings, Research Contributions, Research Tracks, Wikipedia Track

Title: Monitoring the Gender Gap with Wikidata Human Gender Indicators

Authors: Maximilian Klein (GroupLens Research), Harsh Gupta, Vivek Rai (Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur), Piotr Konieczny (Hanyang University) and Haiyi Zhu (GroupLens Research)

Abstract: The gender gap in Wikipedia’s content, specifically in the representation of women in biographies, is well-known but has been difficult to measure. Furthermore the impacts of efforts to address this gender gap have received little attention. To investigate we utilise Wikidata, the database that feeds Wikipedia, and introduce the “Wikidata Human Gender Indicators” (WHGI), a free and open source, longitudinal, biographical dataset monitoring gender disparities across time, space, culture, occupation and language. Through these lenses we show how the representation of women is changing along 11 dimensions. Validations of WHGI are presented against three exogenous datasets: the world’s historical population, “traditional” gender-disparity indices (GDI, GEI, GGGI and SIGI), and occupational gender according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Furthermore, to demonstrate its general use in research, we revisit previously published findings on Wikipedia’s gender bias that can be strengthened by WHGI.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.

Out of Altruism or Because it Reads Well on the CV?: The Motivations for Participation in the Freifunk Community Compared to FLOSS

Announcement, Conference Contributions, F/L/OSS Track, OpenSym 2016, Proceedings, Research Contributions, Research Tracks, Short Research Papers

Title: Out of Altruism or Because it Reads Well on the CV?: The Motivations for Participation in the Freifunk Community Compared to FLOSS

Authors: Lyudmila Vaseva (Freie Universitaet Berlin)

Abstract: Motivation of free, libre and open source software developers has been widely studied over the years. The reasons people engage in this seemingly altruistic behavior have been elaborated and classified. The present work addresses a slightly different issue: what motivates individuals to participate in community network projects? Are the reasons similar to or quite distinct from these relevant to contributors to free software? Based on recently conducted interviews with community network activists from the Germany based project Freifunk and established FLOSS motivation research, we will analyse the specifics of the Freifunk project and the factors which spur its members to action. The obtained insights could then hopefully be used to understand the underlying group processes and help build sustainable communities.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.

Evaluating Open Collaboration Opportunities in the Fire Service with FireCrowd

Announcement, Conference Contributions, OpenSym 2016, Proceedings, Research Contributions, Research Tracks, Short Research Papers, Wikis and Open Collaboration Track

Title: Evaluating Open Collaboration Opportunities in the Fire Service with FireCrowd

Authors: Eleanor R. Burgess (University College London) and Aaron Shaw (Northwestern University)

Abstract: In emergency response organizations like the fire service, personnel require easy access to reliable, up-to-date safety protocols. Systems for creating and managing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) within these command and control organizations are often rigid, inaccessible, and siloed. Open collaboration systems like wikis and social computing tools have the potential to address these limitations, but have not been analyzed for intra-organizational use in emergency services. In response to a request from the Fire Protection Research Foundation (FPRF) we evaluated a high-fidelity open collaboration system prototype, FireCrowd, that was designed to manage SOPs within the U.S. fire service. We use the prototype as a technology probe and apply human-centered design methods in a suburban fire department in the Chicago area. We find that organizational factors would inhibit the adoption of some open collaboration practices and identify points in current practices that offer opportunities for open collaboration in the future.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.

Investigating teachers’ practices of using games in school: A pattern-based approach

Announcement, Conference Contributions, Open Educational Resources Track, OpenSym 2016, Proceedings, Research Contributions, Research Tracks, Short Research Papers

Title: Investigating teachers’ practices of using games in school: A pattern-based approach

Authors: Triinu Jesmin and Tobias Ley (Tallinn University)

Abstract: We introduce teachers’ practice patterns as a possible way to enhance knowledge building about game use in schools. We developed patterns through critical incident interviews with 15 Estonian school teachers and validated them in an online forum. We present the patterns, experiences around employing the approach for knowledge building and report some general themes on game use in schools that have emerged from this work.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.