> I'm not sure if you read the article > As the author states in a comment Ie, not in the article. Can you elaborate on how that paper 'tells me' my own lived

> I'm not sure if you read the article > As the author states in a comment Ie, not in the article. Can you elaborate on how that paper 'tells me' my own lived experience the last 20 years maintaining FOSS projects and offering patches 'isn't true'? That sounds arrogant on your part. The paper tries to guess gender from github nyms and profile pics, and looking for google + integration, this seems like a red flag to me. I couldn't guess gender or sex from that, especially considering regional differences, like anime pictures for profile pics, unless it was explicitly telling me in the name. What they may instead be partitioning is the aggressiveness / confidence of the nym and its presentation, which corrolates later to what happens at the first hurdle for their patches. For simple bug fixes, patches are typically acceptable right away. For more complex fixes and new features, some negotiation is needed with the maintainer as to how it should be done, there are often several ways that are reasonable, but eg, only one or two that align with future plans for the code. If the maintainer asks for a redo, a good proportion of contributors give up, they have exhausted their initial energy. Similarly, when asked for tests, or presented with considerations for other supported platforms the contributor doesn't care about, more give up. It requires extra confidence to approach the maintainer about preferred ways to do the patch before just starting on it. The maintainers are sometimes assholes (I am pretty sure, to everyone). I think it's very hard to unpick why patches didn't go anywhere unless you follow the story of each, certainly you need abnormal energy and confidence to get started and get over the hurdles for anything nontrivial.