Bots for Pull Requests: The Good, the Bad, and the Promising

Abstract

Software bots automate tasks within Open Source Software (OSS) projects' pull requests and save reviewing time and effort ('the good'). However, their interactions can be disruptive and noisy and lead to information overload ('the bad'). To identify strategies to overcome such problems, we applied Design Fiction as a participatory method with 32 practitioners. We elicited 22 design strategies for a bot mediator or the pull request user interface ('the promising'). Participants envisioned a separate place in the pull request interface for bot interactions and a bot mediator that can summarize and customize other bots' actions to mitigate noise. We also collected participants' perceptions about a prototype implementing the envisioned strategies. Our design strategies can guide the development of future bots and social coding platforms.