Understanding "Watchers" on GitHub

Submitted by msquire on Fri, 2014-08-01 19:11

Title	Understanding "Watchers" on GitHub
Publication Type	Conference Paper
Year of Publication	2014
Authors	Sheoran, J, Blincoe, K, Kalliamvakou, E, Damian, D, Ell, J
Secondary Title	Proceedings of the 11th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories
Pagination	336–339
Publisher	ACM
Place Published	New York, NY, USA
ISBN Number	978-1-4503-2863-0
Keywords	github, mining challenge, msr challenge, repositories, Software Teams, Watchers
Abstract	Users on GitHub can watch repositories to receive notifications about project activity. This introduces a new type of passive project membership. In this paper, we investigate the behavior of watchers and their contribution to the projects they watch. We find that a subset of project watchers begin contributing to the project and those contributors account for a significant percentage of contributors on the project. As contributors, watchers are more confident and contribute over a longer period of time in a more varied way than other contributors. This is likely attributable to the knowledge gained through project notifications.
URL	http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2597073.2597114
DOI	10.1145/2597073.2597114
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