From Community Forums to Issue Trackers: A Moodle Case Study

2026-06-18

AI Summary

This study addresses the lack of effective cross-channel traceability between community forums and issue trackers in open-source software, which hinders collaboration and transparency throughout the feature request lifecycle. Focusing on the Moodle platform, the research integrates empirical analysis of forum and Jira data, semi-structured interviews, and case studies to systematically reveal that cross-channel links are highly sparse—only approximately 3.5% of issues reference forum discussions—and that author roles are distinctly differentiated, with users predominantly initiating forum posts while developers primarily create tracker issues. Furthermore, the conversion process from forum requests to tracked issues is characterized by informality and low responsiveness. The findings underscore critical gaps in tooling support and ambiguous accountability, offering empirical evidence and design implications for improving collaborative infrastructure in open-source ecosystems.

Abstract

Sustaining open-source software (OSS) requires effective practices for evolution and change management. In OSS projects, evolution is largely driven by feature requests and enhancements proposed by diverse stakeholders. These requests are often discussed across multiple communication channels, particularly community forums and issue trackers, where stake-holders negotiate intent, clarify requirements, and coordinate development. Despite prior research on OSS forums and issue trackers, we lack an empirical understanding of who creates and maintains links between forum posts and tracker issues, and how these links support clarification, feedback, and coordination throughout feature request lifecycles. To address these questions, we conduct an in-depth case study of Moodle, a widely used open-source learning management system. Our study combines (1) an empirical analysis of cross-channel trace links between Moodle's community forum and its Jira issue tracker, (2) semi-structured interviews with developers, and (3) semi-structured interviews with forum participants. Our results show that cross-channel traceability is rare: only 818 of 23,169 (~3.5%) feature request issues in Moodle's Jira link back to a community forum, and authorship differs by channel, with developers authoring 52.8% of tracker issues, while forum feature requests are predominantly authored by users, and only 230 linked pairs share the same author. The qualitative findings further reveal that the transition from forum posts to issues is largely ad hoc, with limited tool support and unclear role ownership, and that users often experience the process as opaque or weakly responsive.

Problem

• open-source software
• feature requests
• community forums
• issue trackers
• cross-channel traceability

Innovation

• cross-channel traceability
• open-source software
• feature request lifecycle
• community forum
• issue tracker