Blog Posts

Mika and I recently spent two weeks biking home to Seattle from our year in Palo Alto. The route was ~1400 kilometers and took us past 10 volcanoes and 4 hot springs. To my delight, the route also took us past at least 8 hairdressers with supposedly funny pun names! Plus two in Oakland on …

Continue reading "Hairdressers with Supposedly Funny Pun Names I’ve Visited Recently"

Both this blog post and the paper it describes are collaborative work led by Charles Kiene with Jialun “Aaron” Jiang. Introducing new technology into a work place is often disruptive, but what if your work was also completely mediated by technology? This is exactly the case for the teams of volunteer moderators who work to …

Continue reading "How Discord moderators build innovative solutions to problems of scale with the past as a guide"

I found what appears to be a “turtile” on the whiteboard in the Community Data Science lab at the University of Washington. [See previous discussion for context.]

In May 2019, my research group was invited to give short remarks on the impact of Janet Fulk and Peter Monge at the International Communication Association‘s annual meeting as part of a session called “Igniting a TON (Technology, Organizing, and Networks) of Insights: Recognizing the Contributions of Janet Fulk and Peter Monge in Shaping the …

Continue reading "Reflections on Janet Fulk and Peter Monge"

I served as a director and as a voting member of the Free Software Foundation for more than a decade. I left both positions over the last 18 months and currently have no formal authority in the organization. So although it is now just my personal opinion, I will publicly add my voice to the …

Continue reading "The Free Software Foundation and Richard Stallman"

I wrote this blog post with Kaylea Champion and a version of this post was originally posted on the Community Data Science Collective blog. Critical software we all rely on can silently crumble away beneath us. Unfortunately, we often don’t find out software infrastructure is in poor condition until it is too late. Over the …

Continue reading "Identifying “Underproduced” Software"

In exciting professional news, it was recently announced that I got an National Science Foundation CAREER award! The CAREER is the US NSF’s most prestigious award for early-career faculty. In addition to the recognition, the award involves a bunch of money for me to put toward my research over the next 5 years. The Department …

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I first started using Debian sometime in the mid 90s and started contributing as a developer and package maintainer more than two decades years ago. My first very first scholarly publication, collaborative work led by Martin Michlmayr that I did when I was still an undergrad at Hampshire College, was about quality and the reliance …

Continue reading "Returning to DebConf"

Ever considered doing research about online communities, free culture/software, and peer production full time? It’s PhD admission season and my research group—the Community Data Science Collective—is doing an open-to-anyone Q&A about PhD admissions this Friday November 5th. We’ve got room in the session and its not too late to sign up to join us! The …

Continue reading "Q&A about doing a PhD with my research group"

Should online communities require people to create accounts before participating? This question has been a source of disagreement among people who start or manage online communities for decades. Requiring accounts makes some sense since users contributing without accounts are a common source of vandalism, harassment, and low quality content. In theory, creating an account can …

Continue reading "The Hidden Costs of Requiring Accounts"