How modern news aggregators help development communities shape and share knowledge

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,...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: ANICHE, Maurício, TREUDE, Christoph, STEINMACHER, Igor, WIESE, Igor Scaliante, PINTO, Gustavo, STOREY, Margaret-Anne, GEROSA, Marco Aurélio
Format: text
Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2018
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Online Access:https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/8928
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Institution: Singapore Management University
Language: English
Description
Summary: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.