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ICSE 2023
Sun 14 - Sat 20 May 2023 Melbourne, Australia
Wed 17 May 2023 13:45 - 14:00 at Meeting Room 109 - Developers' behaviors Chair(s): Brittany Johnson

Newcomers are critical for the success and continuity of open source software (OSS) projects. To attract newcomers and facilitate their onboarding, many OSS projects recommend tasks for newcomers, such as good first issues (GFIs). Previous studies have preliminarily investigated the effects of GFIs and techniques to identify suitable GFIs. However, it is still unclear whether just recommending tasks is enough and how significant mentoring is for newcomers. To better understand mentoring in OSS communities, we analyze the resolution process of 48,402 GFIs from 964 repositories through a mix-method approach. We investigate the extent, the mentorship structures, the discussed topics, and the relevance of expert involvement. We find that $\sim$70% of GFIs have expert participation, with each GFI usually having one expert who makes two comments. Half of GFIs will receive their first expert comment within 8.5 hours after a newcomer comment. Through analysis of the collaboration networks of newcomers and experts, we observe that community mentorship presents four types of structure: centralized mentoring, decentralized mentoring, collaborative mentoring, and distributed mentoring. As for discussed topics, we identify 14 newcomer challenges and 18 expert mentoring content. By fitting the generalized linear models, we find that expert involvement positively correlates with newcomers’ successful contributions but negatively correlates with newcomers’ retention. Our study manifests the status and significance of mentoring in the OSS projects, which provides rich practical implications for optimizing the mentoring process and helping newcomers contribute smoothly and successfully.

Wed 17 May

Displayed time zone: Hobart change

13:45 - 15:15
13:45
15m
Talk
Is It Enough to Recommend Tasks to Newcomers? Understanding Mentoring on Good First Issues
Technical Track
Xin Tan Beihang University,, Yiran Chen Beihang University, Haohua Wu Beihang University, Minghui Zhou Peking University, Li Zhang Beihang University
Pre-print
14:00
15m
Talk
From Organizations to Individuals: Psychoactive Substance Use By Professional Programmers
Technical Track
Kaia Newman University of Michigan, Madeline Endres University of Michigan, Westley Weimer University of Michigan, Brittany Johnson George Mason University
Pre-print
14:15
15m
Talk
On the Self-Governance and Episodic Changes in Apache Incubator Projects: An Empirical Study
Technical Track
Likang Yin University of California at Davis, Xiyu Zhang University of California Davis, Vladimir Filkov University of California at Davis, USA
14:30
15m
Talk
Socio-Technical Anti-Patterns in Building ML-Enabled Software: Insights from Leaders on the Forefront
Technical Track
Alina Mailach Leipzig University, Norbert Siegmund Leipzig University
Pre-print
14:45
15m
Talk
Moving on from the software engineers' gambit: an approach to support the defense of software effort estimates
Technical Track
Patricia Matsubara Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS), Igor Steinmacher Northern Arizona University, Bruno Gadelha UFAM, Tayana Conte Universidade Federal do Amazonas
Pre-print
15:00
7m
Talk
iTrace-Toolkit: A Pipeline for Analyzing Eye-Tracking Data of Software Engineering Studies
DEMO - Demonstrations
Joshua Behler Kent State University, Praxis Weston Kent State University, Drew Guarnera College of Wooster, Bonita Sharif University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA, Jonathan I. Maletic Kent State University
15:07
7m
Talk
Under the Bridge: Trolling and the Challenges of Recruiting Software Developers for Empirical Research Studies
NIER - New Ideas and Emerging Results
Ella Kokinda Clemson University, Makayla Moster Clemson University, James Dominic Clemson University, Paige Rodeghero Clemson University
Pre-print