Their research appears in the proceedings of OpenSym 2016, the 12th International Symposium on Open Collaboration, held in Berlin, Germany.
Daniel Schneider ’16, Assistant Professor of Computing Sciences Scott Spurlock and Professor of Computing Sciences Megan Squire published “Differentiating Communication Styles of Leaders on the Linux Kernel Mailing List” at OpenSym 2016, the 12th International Symposium on Open Collaboration, held Aug. 17-19 in Berlin, Germany.
Their paper describes how to use text mining and machine learning to identify differences in the communication styles of two of the lead developers of the Linux kernel. Using the text of 40,000 email messages over 20 years, the authors developed a program that could automatically distinguish between the writing styles of these two individuals with 96 percent accuracy. The results of this study can help researchers understand the culture of the Linux community, and why there is occasional controversy regarding differences in communication styles on the email mailing list for that important software project.
The full citation of the paper follows:
Schneider, D., Spurlock, S., and Squire, M. (2016). Differentiating Communication Styles of Leaders on the Linux Kernel Mailing List. In Proceedings of the 12th International Symposium on Open Collaboration (OpenSym 2016). Berlin, Germany. August 17-19. pp 101-110. [preprint link]