Papers for

open source platform managers

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

Motivations that boost effort and lasting contributions in open source

Motivation and Contribution in Open Source Software: A Meta-Analytic Investigation

Abstract: Research on why people contribute to open source software (OSS) and related open collaboration platforms spans more than two decades, but its findings conflict, and studies often treat the work people contribute and their intention to keep contributing as interchangeable. Drawing on self-determination theory and motivation crowding theory, we meta-analyze 41 studies. The main analysis pools 178 correlations of eight antecedents with contribution effort and continuance intention from 29 independent samples (N = 9,632). Seven antecedents relate positively to effort, all eight relate positively to intention, and each relates at least as strongly to intention as to effort. Contrary to a common assumption, intrinsic motivation is not more strongly related to effort than extrinsic motivation, but its gap between intention and effort is larger. Reputation relates to effort mainly on platforms with a reputation system, and we find no sign that monetary rewards crowd out enjoyment. The findings inform how platforms can turn contributors' intentions into work.

Wed 21 OctHuman-Computer InteractionSoftware Engineering
The gist
People contribute to open source software for many reasons, but studies don't always agree about what motivates them or how motivation relates to the amount of work done. The authors combined results from 41 studies and found that all types of motivation they looked at help people keep wanting to contribute and actually put in effort. They also found that enjoying the work doesn’t always mean more work is done, and money does not reduce enjoyment. Knowing this helps platforms encourage contributors to turn their good intentions into real contributions.
Open → 2610.29199v1

Community edits over time reveal how online charts evolve

Beyond Initial Creation: Two Decades of Community-based Chart Revisions from Wikimedia Commons

Abstract: Open online communities like Wikipedia offer a rich space for understanding the organic evolution of public-facing artifacts, but little is known about how these communities collectively edit chart images. We investigate the phenomenon of "community editing" of visualizations by exploring chart revision patterns on Wikimedia Commons. We introduce a novel dataset of 7,786 longitudinal chart revisions across 1,664 images, labeled with edit categories using an LLM pipeline. Initial data analysis uncovered several novel findings. Multi-contributor revision is associated with more edits to mark styling and text content compared to single-contributor revision. Temporally, mark and text edits occur in more "bursty" cadences than data edits. In addition, while SVG charts attract more unique contributors and revisions than raster charts, their edit histories involve more tightly scoped and less diverse changes. This dataset enables a wide range of analyses of chart change over time.

Wed 14 OctHuman-Computer Interaction
The gist
How do people together improve charts over time on Wikipedia's image site? The authors studied nearly 8,000 edits to over 1,600 chart images to find out. They saw that when many people edit, they focus more on style and text rather than data. Also, charts made as SVG files get more contributors but smaller, more focused changes than image files. This work helps us understand how collaborative editing changes visual information.
Open → 2610.19337v1