What's in our backlogs?

[richardGreen]

Anna Headley, Eliot Jordan

aheadley@princeton.edu

I will use Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning techniques to analyze issue backlogs in applications from institutions throughout the community. I will apply a variety of techniques in an attempt to answer questions like:

What kinds of open issues do we have in general as a community?

• Can I extract an interesting set of widely-desired features or widely-held use cases?
• Can I identify connections that might lead to collaboration across institutions?

What solutions already exist that might advance open issues?

• Can I link open issues in one backlog to merged PRs in another repository?

What have people been working on recently?

• Can we characterize the full set of issues that have been closed over the past year?

What patterns of development do repositories follow?

• Can we describe the life cycle of repository development by aligning issues based on their creation / completion dates relative to the initial commit?

These may or may not be the exact questions my talk will address, depending on the direction the project naturally takes. I will focus on applications in use or under development at institutions, as opposed to community-maintained engines and core gems. This talk will describe my process, results, and evaluate the success of the endeavor.

[richardGreen]

8/23 Confirmed - also added co-presenter Eliot Jordan.

[richardGreen]

8/27 Anna registered

[brianmcbride]

9/27 - Elliot is unable to attend.