This document analyzes data from various Plone and other open source mailing lists to evaluate how open and inclusive the worldwide Plone community is. It finds that response rates to newcomers' questions are generally high, though response times vary. It also finds that while Japanese language communities are vibrant, they remain somewhat isolated from the broader international community. The document concludes there are both pros and cons to the separation of local language communities.

1. How open is the worldwide
Plone community?
Jonathan Lewis
Plone Symposium East
28 May 2010

2. motivation
• users are important
• some users become developers
• many users prefer other languages
• isolation of East Asian communities
• empirical evidence required

3. Research on OSS
communities
• social structures, decision-making, ...
• analysis of codebases, mailing lists
• Tang et al on global participation
• emphasis on developers
• emphasis on English-medium

4. Aims of analysis
• Newcomers’ questions
• Response rate
• Median response time
• Regulars also on English forums?

5. Data sources
• Plone-Users • Geeklog (en & ja)
• plone.jp • WordPress (en & ja)
• dzug-zope
• Plone Cono Sur

6. De nitions & tools
• newcomer: posted < 20 times
• regular: posted >= 20 times
• mailing list thread analysis:
• jwzthreading-0.91

7. Messages analyzed

8. Response rates

9. Response times

10. Regulars

11. Conclusions
• response rates high
• response times variable
• Japanese communities
• vibrant but isolated
• pros and cons

12. References etc.
• Reference
• Tang, R., Hassan, A.E., Zou, Y.: A case study on the impact of global participation on mailing lists
communications of open source projects. In: Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on
Knowledge Collaboration in Software Development (KCSD), Kyoto, Japan (November 2009)
• Contact
• Jonathan Lewis
Graduate School of Social Sciences
Hitotsubashi University
jonathan_lewis@mac.com
www.lewis.soc.hit-u.ac.jp