How Modern News Aggregators Help Development Communities Shape and Share Knowledge

Maurício Aniche, Christoph Treude, Igor Steinmacher, Igor Wiese, Gustavo Pinto, Margaret Anne Storey, Marco Aurélio Gerosa

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

52 Scopus citations

Abstract

Many developers rely on modern news aggregator sites such as Reddit and Hacker News to stay up to date with the latest technological developments and trends. In order to understand what motivates developers to contribute, what kind of content is shared, and how knowledge is shaped by the community, we interviewed and surveyed developers that participate on the Reddit programming subreddit and we analyzed a sample of posts on both Reddit and Hacker News. We learned what kind of content is shared in these websites and developer motivations for posting, sharing, discussing, evaluating, and aggregating knowledge on these aggregators, while revealing challenges developers face in terms of how content and participant behavior is moderated. Our insights aim to improve the practices developers follow when using news aggregators, as well as guide tool makers on how to improve their tools. Our findings are also relevant to researchers that study developer communities of practice.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)499-510
Number of pages12
JournalProceedings - International Conference on Software Engineering
Volume2018-January
DOIs
StatePublished - 2018
Event40th International Conference on Software Engineering, ICSE 2018 - Gothenburg, Sweden
Duration: May 27 2018Jun 3 2018

Keywords

  • News aggregators
  • development communities
  • knowledge sharing

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Software

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