@inproceedings{sheoran2014understanding,
author = {Sheoran, Jyoti and Blincoe, Kelly and Kalliamvakou, Eirini and Damian, Daniela and Ell, Jordan},
title = {Understanding "watchers" on GitHub},
booktitle = {2014 Mining Software Repositories},
year = {2014},
month = {May},
abstract = {Users on GitHub can watch repositories to receive notifications about project activity. This introduces a new type of passive project membership. In this paper, we investigate the behavior of watchers and their contribution to the projects they watch. We find that a subset of project watchers begin contributing to the project and those contributors account for a significant percentage of contributors on the project. As contributors, watchers are more confident and contribute over a longer period of time in a more varied way than other contributors. This is likely attributable to the knowledge gained through project notifications.},
publisher = {ACM},
url = {http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/research/publication/understanding-watchers-on-github/},
pages = {336-339},
}