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A bot identification model and tool based on GitHub activity sequence“: Identifying whether GitHub contributors are automated bots is important for empirical research on collaborative software development practices. Multiple such bot identification approaches have been proposed in the past. In this article, we identify the limitations of these approaches and we propose a new binary classification model, called BIMBAS, to overcome these limitations. To do so, we propose a new ground-truth dataset containing 1035 bots and 1115 humans on GitHub. We train BIMBAS on a wide range of features extracted from the activity sequences of these GitHub contributors. We show that the performance of BIMBAS (in terms of precision, recall, F1 score and AUC) is comparable to state-of-the-art bot identification approaches, while being able to identify bots engaged in a wider range of activity types. We implement RABBIT, an open-source command-line bot identification tool based on BIMBAS. We demonstrate its ability to be used at scale, and show that its efficiency outperforms the state-of-the-art.

Sun 27 Apr

Displayed time zone: Eastern Time (US & Canada) change

11:00 - 12:30
Session 1: Bots in Open Source and Development PracticesBotSE at 213
Chair(s): Ahmad Abdellatif University of Calgary

Ahmad Abdellatif

11:00
18m
Talk
A Bot Identification Model and Tool Based on GitHub Activity Sequences
BotSE
Natarajan Chidambaram University of Mons, Alexandre Decan University of Mons; F.R.S.-FNRS, Tom Mens University of Mons
11:18
18m
Talk
The Secret Life of Bots in Pull Requests: An Empirical Study based on Apache Projects
BotSE
Chenhao Wei Stevens Institute of Technology, Lu Xiao Stevens Institute of Technology, Yutong Zhao University of Central Missouri, Ting Liao Stevens Institute of Technology
11:36
18m
Talk
Observing bots in the wild: A quantitative analysis of a large open source ecosystem
BotSE
Natarajan Chidambaram University of Mons, Tom Mens University of Mons
11:54
18m
Talk
GZoltarAction: A Fault Localization Bot for GitHub Repositories
BotSE
Hugo Paiva Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, Portugal, José Campos Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, Portugal, Rui Abreu Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, Portugal
12:12
18m
Talk
Opportunities and Challenges of Software Engineering Bots: A Forward-Looking Analysis
BotSE
Glaucia Melo Toronto Metropolitan University
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