The First Issue Matters: Linking Task-Level Characteristics to Long-Term Newcomer Retention in OSS

TL;DR

This study investigates how the characteristics of first issues in open-source projects influence long-term newcomer retention, providing insights for better onboarding practices.

Contribution

It offers a large-scale empirical analysis combining predictive, interpretability, and causal methods to identify issue features that promote sustained participation.

Findings

Interaction-related issue features strongly correlate with retention

Moderately experienced reporters and active discussions boost retention

Neutral or slightly negative comments are linked to higher retention

Abstract

Sustaining newcomer participation is critical for the long-term health of open-source communities. Although prior research has explored various task recommendation approaches to help newcomers resolve their first-issue, these methods overlook how characteristics of first-issues may influence newcomers' long-term retention, limiting our understanding of whether initial success leads to sustained participation and hindering effective onboarding design. In this paper, we conduct a large-scale empirical study to examine how first-issue characteristics affect newcomer retention. We combine predictive analysis, interpretability techniques, and causal inference to estimate the causal effects of issue characteristics on retention outcomes. The prediction task supports the interpretation and shows that interaction-related characteristics exhibit stronger associations with retention than intrinsic issue attributes. The causal analysis further reveals that issues reported by moderately experienced contributors, accompanied by moderate discussion intensity and participation from project members, and neutral or slightly negative comment sentiment, have higher retention potential. These findings provide actionable insights for OSS maintainers on designing issue management practices that better support long-term newcomer retention.