Consensus Building in Distributed Technical Discussions

Zilouchian Moghaddam, Roshanak

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/34837 Copy

Description

Title

Consensus Building in Distributed Technical Discussions

Author(s)

Zilouchian Moghaddam, Roshanak

Contributor(s)

• Bailey, Brian P.
• Fu, Wai-Tat

Issue Date

2012-10

Keyword(s)

• Consensus building
• Open Source Software

Abstract

The issue management systems in open source software projects contain different categories of discussions, but they all share the goal of reaching consensus on solution proposals. In this paper, we examine the consensus building process in distributed discussions of technical issues in one mature open source software community. Our analysis shows that providing a concrete solution in the form of a patch implementation is most predictive of reaching consensus in technical discussions. This is in sharp contrast to prior work on consensus building in distributed UI design discussions which showed that having participants with more experiences and prior interaction histories are more predictive of reaching consensus. Our results highlight that consensus building depends on the nature of the issue. In technical issues that tend to be more driven by objective evaluations providing more patches promotes consensus. However, in UI design issues that tend to be more driven by subjective evaluations, having more experience participants helps discussions to reach consensus.

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/34837

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