It takes a digital village

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It takes a digital village An analytical-ish look at what grows strong communities on GitHub.com @benbalter ben.balter.com [email protected]

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The promise of open source Publish code People contribute

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Online communities are offline communities, just online

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All communities have three things e.g., neighborhoods, congregations, bowling leagues

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Shared challenge a nice place to live, practicing religious beliefs, or an excuse to wear silly shoes

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Leaders elected officials, clergy, team captains

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Norms (and the means to enforce them) laws, religious teachings, league regulations

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Open source communities Challenge - Project goal Leaders - Maintainers Norms - Meta files

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Encouraging good   online citizenship

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The Community Profile API

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Community Profile API

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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" } ]

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GitHub as a dataset 21M developers 58M Projects

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Three quick qualifiers

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Types of projects on GitHub 80% - Homework, published code, terrible ideas 20% - Open source projects

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Only looking at Public, non-fork, non-spammy repos

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Correlation != causation

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Opensource.guide

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The contributor funnel @MikeMcQuaid

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How to get more users

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Solve a shared problem

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Market your project

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Websites attract PRs # of Pull Requests % of repos with homepage 1-10 23% 11-100 44% 101-1000 65% 1000+ 84%

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Documentation maturity model README Wiki /docs

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How to get more contributors

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Reduce friction

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Friction (n) - the time it takes to go from "I want to contribute" to "I have"

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Foster a welcoming community Artifacts • README • Contributing • License • Code of conduct Practices • Welcoming • Coaching • Thanking • Mentoring

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Document process

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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

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Articulate your vision

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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/

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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%

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License your project

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chosealicense.com

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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%

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Add a code of conduct

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GitHub Community Guidelines

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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

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No content

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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%*

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How to get more maintainers

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Get repeat contributors

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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%

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Decentralize governance

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Large projects are organization owned # of pull requests % of org-owned repositories 1-10 19% 11-100 50% 101-1000 75% 1000+ 94%

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Take aways

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Number of contributors Complexity

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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%

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What's next?

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No content

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Expanded community metrics • Issue and PR templates • Issues opened by non-collaborator • Contributions from non-collaborators

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Product interventions

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Hi there! It looks like you're trying to start an open source project.

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Real-time community insights

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It takes a digital village An analytical-ish look at what grows strong communities on GitHub.com @benbalter ben.balter.com [email protected]