It takes a digital village

An analytical-ish look at what grows strong communities on GitHub.com

Transcript

1. It takes a digital village An analytical-ish look at what grows strong communities on GitHub.com @benbalter ben.balter.com ben.balter@github.com
2. The promise of open source Publish code People contribute
3. Online communities are offline communities, just online
4. All communities have three things e.g., neighborhoods, congregations, bowling leagues
5. Shared challenge a nice place to live, practicing religious beliefs, or an excuse to wear silly shoes
6. Leaders elected officials, clergy, team captains
7. Norms (and the means to enforce them) laws, religious teachings, league regulations
8. Open source communities Challenge - Project goal Leaders - Maintainers Norms - Meta files
9. Encouraging good 
 online citizenship
10. The Community Profile API
11. Community Profile API
12. GET /repositories/:repo_id/community/profile [ { "health_percentage": 100, "files": { "code_of_conduct": { "name": "Contributor Covenant", "key": "contributor_covenant", "url": null, "html_url": "https://github.com/octocat/Hello-World/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md" }, "contributing": { "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/octocat/Hello-World/contents/CONTRIBUTING", "html_url": "https://github.com/octocat/Hello-World/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING" }, "license": { "name": "MIT License", "key": "mit", "url": "https://api.github.com/licenses/mit", "html_url": "https://github.com/octocat/Hello-World/blob/master/LICENSE" }, "readme": { "url": "https://api.github.com/repos/octocat/Hello-World/contents/README.md", "html_url": "https://github.com/octocat/Hello-World/blob/master/README.md" } }, "updated_at": "2017-02-28T19:09:29Z" } ]
13. GitHub as a dataset 21M developers 58M Projects
14. Three quick qualifiers
15. Types of projects on GitHub 80% - Homework, published code, terrible ideas 20% - Open source projects
16. Only looking at Public, non-fork, non-spammy repos
17. Correlation != causation
18. Opensource.guide
19. The contributor funnel @MikeMcQuaid
20. How to get more users
21. Solve a shared problem
22. Market your project
23. Websites attract PRs # of Pull Requests % of repos with homepage 1-10 23% 11-100 44% 101-1000 65% 1000+ 84%
24. Documentation maturity model README Wiki /docs
25. How to get more contributors
26. Reduce friction
27. Friction (n) - the time it takes to go from "I want to contribute" to "I have"
28. Foster a welcoming community Artifacts • README • Contributing • License • Code of conduct Practices • Welcoming • Coaching • Thanking • Mentoring
29. Document process
30. CONTRIBUTING files attract contributions Pull requests Unique contributors Repeat contributors 1-10 2% 1% 1% 11-100 8% 16% 22% 101-1000 25% 42% 34% 1000+ 58% 6%* 1%* Percentage of repositories with a CONTRIBUTING file
31. Articulate your vision
32. Things to include in your README • What problems are we solving? • What's the technology stack? • What's the project's status? • How to use/contribute? • If you want contributions http://ben.balter.com/2017/04/14/your-projects-readme-is-your-project-constitution/
33. Percentage of repositories with a README Pull requests Unique contributors Repeat contributors 1-10 86% 69% 73% 11-100 92% 86% 84% 101-1000 97% 85% 81%* 1000+ 98% 99.75% 99.84%
34. License your project
35. chosealicense.com
36. Percentage of repositories with a LICENSE Pull requests Unique contributors Repeat contributors 1-10 28% 18% 24% 11-100 50% 64% 66% 101-1000 67% 75% 78% 1000+ 82% 97% 97%
37. Add a code of conduct
38. GitHub Community Guidelines
39. Why add a code of conduct? • Reasonable people disagree on the internet • Establishes expectations for community norms • Signals that your project is a welcoming community • Better to have before something happens, not after • It's the right thing to do
41. Percentage of repositories with a Code of Conduct Pull requests Unique contributors Repeat contributors 1-10 0% 0% 0% 11-100 1% 1% 1% 101-1000 2% 3% 3% 1000+ 8% 0%* 0%*
42. How to get more maintainers
43. Get repeat contributors
44. Repeat contributors are hard to find # of single contributors Code of Conduct CONTRIBUTING LICENSE README Homepage 1-10 0% 1% 16% 68% 11% 11-100 1% 19% 66% 86% 28% 101-1000 5% 51% 78% 92% 20% 1000+ 1% 3% 97% 99% 17%
45. Decentralize governance
46. Large projects are organization owned # of pull requests % of org-owned repositories 1-10 19% 11-100 50% 101-1000 75% 1000+ 94%
47. Take aways
48. Number of contributors Complexity
49. Adoption is low % of repositories >= 1 issue >= 1 PR >= 5 PRs >= 100 PRs >= 500 PRs Code of Conduct 0% 0% 1% 2% 5% CONTRIBUTING 0% 3% 7% 27% 50% LICENSE file 4% 31% 47% 68% 80% README file 10% 87% 90% 96% 98%
50. What's next?
52. Expanded community metrics • Issue and PR templates • Issues opened by non-collaborator • Contributions from non-collaborators
53. Product interventions
54. Hi there! It looks like you're trying to start an open source project.
55. Real-time community insights
56. It takes a digital village An analytical-ish look at what grows strong communities on GitHub.com @benbalter ben.balter.com ben.balter@github.com