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The "Shut the f**k up" Phenomenon: Characterizing Incivility in Open Source Code Review Discussions

Published: 18 October 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Code review is an important quality assurance activity for software development. Code review discussions among developers and maintainers can be heated and sometimes involve personal attacks and unnecessary disrespectful comments, demonstrating, therefore, incivility. Although incivility in public discussions has received increasing attention from researchers in different domains, the knowledge about the characteristics, causes, and consequences of uncivil communication is still very limited in the context of software development, and more specifically, code review. To address this gap in the literature, we leverage the mature social construct of incivility as a lens to understand confrontational conflicts in open source code review discussions. For that, we conducted a qualitative analysis on 1,545 emails from the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML) that were associated with rejected changes. We found that more than half (66.66%) of the non-technical emails included uncivil features. Particularly, frustration, name calling, and impatience are the most frequent features in uncivil emails. We also found that there are civil alternatives to address arguments, while uncivil comments can potentially be made by any people when discussing any topic. Finally, we identified various causes and consequences of such uncivil communication. Our work serves as the first study about the phenomenon of in(civility) in open source software development, paving the road for a new field of research about collaboration and communication in the context of software engineering activities.

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cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction  Volume 5, Issue CSCW2
CSCW2
October 2021
5376 pages
EISSN:2573-0142
DOI:10.1145/3493286
Issue’s Table of Contents
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Published: 18 October 2021
Published in PACMHCI Volume 5, Issue CSCW2

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Author Tags

  1. civility
  2. code review
  3. communication
  4. incivility
  5. online communities
  6. open source

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  • Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada

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