Quid Pro Quo: An exploration of reciprocity in code review

We explore the role of reciprocity in code review processes. Reciprocity manifests itself in two ways: 1) reviewing code for others translates to accepted code contributions, and 2) having contributions accepted increases the reviews made for others. We use vector autoregressive (VAR) models to expl...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Gavidia-Calderon, Carlos, HAN, DongGyun, Bennaceur, Amel
Format: text
Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2022
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Online Access:https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/10115
https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/11115/viewcontent/reciprocity_open_source_pv.pdf
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Institution: Singapore Management University
Language: English
Description
Summary:We explore the role of reciprocity in code review processes. Reciprocity manifests itself in two ways: 1) reviewing code for others translates to accepted code contributions, and 2) having contributions accepted increases the reviews made for others. We use vector autoregressive (VAR) models to explore the causal relation between reviews performed and accepted contributions. After fitting VAR models for 24 active open-source developers, we found evidence of reciprocity in 6 of them. These results suggest reciprocity does play a role in code review, that can potentially be exploited to increase reviewer participation.