A Lot of Talk and a Badge: An Exploratory Analysis of Personal Achievements in GitHub

Understand

Context.

• GitHub has introduced a new gamification element through personal achievements, whereby badges are unlocked and displayed on developers' personal profile pages in recognition of their development activities.
• Objective.
• In this paper, we present an exploratory analysis using mixed methods to study the diffusion of personal badges in GitHub, in addition to the effects and reactions to their introduction.