MSR 2013 May 18–19. San Francisco, California, USA
The 10th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories
Co-located with:

Challenge Chair

Alberto Bacchelli

Alberto Bacchelli
University of Lugano
Switzerland

Committee Members

Gabriele Bavota University of Salerno, Italy
Olga Baysal University of Waterloo, Canada
Oscar Callau University of Chile, Chile
Julius Davies University of British Columbia, Canada
Emanuel Giger University of Zurich, Switzerland
Georgios Gousios Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
Anja Guzzi Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
Sonia Haiduc Wayne State University, USA
Chris Parnin Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Shaun Phillips University of Calgary, Canada
Sarah Rastkar University of British Columbia, Canada
Stephen Thomas Queen’s University, Canada
Christoph Treude McGill University, Canada

 

Mining Challenge

The International Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR) has hosted a mining challenge since 2006. With this challenge we call upon everyone interested to apply their tools to bring research and industry closer together by analyzing a common data set. The challenge is for researchers and practitioners who bravely put their mining tools and approaches on a dare.

This year, the challenge is on the Stack Overflow data. We provide the dump for the Stack Overflow web service and you should use your brain, tools, computational power, and magic to uncover interesting findings related to it.

How to Participate in the Challenge

Participating in the challenge requires you to:

1. Download the data you want to analyze. We provide you with links to get challenge data. Feel free to use additional and/or other data sources.

2. Report your findings in a four-page document.

3. Submit your report on or before, March 04, 2013.

4. If your report is accepted, present your awesome findings at MSR 2013!


Challenge Data

This year, the focus of the challenge is the Stack Overflow data, which has recently raised the interest of many researchers. Stack Overflow is a website featuring questions and answers on a wide range of topics in computer programming and software engineering. We provide you with the latest official dump (updated August 2012), as available from BitTorrent. To simplify the data extraction process we removed data not related to Stack Overflow and kept the XML format. We also provide you with a Posgresql dump of this data.

Stack Overflow data is cc-by-sa licensed and it requires correct attribution (see this page, or the readme.txt in the provided archive, for further information). Furthermore, when you use the data, as provided by the MSR 2013 challenge, we ask you to cite it as in the following:

@INPROCEEDINGS{MSRChallenge2013, author={Alberto Bacchelli}, title={Mining Challenge 2013: Stack Overflow}, booktitle={The 10th Working Conference on Mining Software Repositories}, year={2013}, pages={to appear} }

Challenge Report

The challenge report should describe the results of your work by providing an introduction to the problem being addressed, the data used, the approach and tools used, your results and their implications, and conclusions. Keep in mind that the report will be evaluated by a jury. Make sure your report highlights the contributions and the importance of your work.

Challenge reports must be at most 4 pages long and must conform at time of submission to the ICSE (and MSR) 2013 Format and Submission Guidelines.

Submission Details

Submit your challenge report (maximum 4 pages) to EasyChair on or before March 4th, 2013. Please submit your challenge reports to the "MSR 2013 Challenge Track". Author notification and camera-ready dates are going to be March 15th and March 29th, respectively.

Papers submitted for consideration should not have been published elsewhere and should not be under review or submitted for review elsewhere during the duration of consideration. ACM plagiarism policies and procedures shall be followed for cases of double submission.

Upon notification of acceptance, all authors of accepted papers will be asked to complete an ACM Copyright form and will receive further instructions for preparing their camera ready versions. At least one author of each paper is expected to present the results at the MSR 2013 conference. All accepted contributions will be published in the conference electronic proceedings.

Prize

This year's prize for the best Mining Challenge will be a Microsoft Surface tablet with Windows RT, sponsored by Microsoft Research.

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge Jeff Atwood and the entire Stack Exchange Network for providing Stack Overflow data dump as cc-by-sa licensed.