Pika: Empowering Non-Programmers to Author Executable Governance Policies in Online Communities

Title of the Paper

Pika: Empowering Non-Programmers to Author Executable Governance Policies in Online Communities

Paper Information

• Research Domain: Online community governance, end-user development systems
• Keywords: Non-programmers, online communities, community governance, declarative language, end-user programming

Research Background and Problem

• Current Issues or Challenges:

  • Online communities have diverse goals and norms, but most existing platforms rely on limited governance models, typically simple role-based permission structures.
  • To implement executable governance policies tailored to specific community needs, programming expertise is often required, excluding non-programmers from the process.
  • This technical barrier places non-technical members in a passive role in the design and review of community governance.

• Importance of the Research:

  • Governance policies are not only crucial for the stability of online communities but also have broader implications for individual well-being and societal institutions.

• Motivation and Related Work:

  • Bots and plugins used across communities have limited functionality and fail to meet evolving community needs.
  • Communities require more personalized and executable governance policies without relying on programming skills.
  • Existing tools like PolicyKit reduce the difficulty of integrating with platform APIs but still demand significant programming expertise.

Solution

• Method or Solution:

  • The authors propose a system called “Pika,” which enables non-programmers to create executable governance policies using a declarative language.
  • Pika consists of three key components:
    1. Declarative Language: Breaks governance policies into modular components, allowing non-programmers to create policies through an intuitive web interface.
    2. Policy Component Library: Implements common policy components and supports extending and adding new ones.
    3. Policy Authoring Interface: A user-friendly, form-based interface that guides users in policy creation without requiring programming.

• Innovative Features:

  • Provides a modular declarative language enabling non-programmers to express complex governance policies.
  • Offers an intuitive policy authoring tool, making the governance process more transparent and democratic.

• Implementation Steps and Key Technologies:

  • Built on PolicyKit infrastructure, utilizing customized actions and procedures to decompose governance policies.
  • Provides filters and modifiers for describing and controlling community actions.
  • Converts JSON-formatted policies generated by the web interface into executable Python code.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Results:

  • User studies showed that non-programmers using Pika were 2.5 times more efficient in constructing policies compared to programmers writing code.
  • The system supports most policy types expected by communities, demonstrating its expressive power and flexibility.

• Comparative Advantages Over Existing Solutions:

  • Pika is more user-friendly and efficient than PolicyKit, significantly lowering the technical barrier.
  • Bridges the gap between non-programmers and programmers, making community governance design accessible beyond technical developers.

• Experiment or Evaluation Results:

  • Non-programming users achieved an average success rate of 84% in two governance scenario tasks, with average completion times of approximately 7.5 minutes and 8.6 minutes.
  • Programmer users rated Pika’s overall usability at 75.85 (based on the System Usability Scale), significantly higher than PolicyKit’s score of 35.45.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  • Pika’s current trigger mechanism only supports event-driven governance and does not accommodate state-based governance (e.g., checking if a role has been inactive for a long time).
  • The policy component library requires further expansion, and methods for sharing components across communities need optimization.
  • Future work includes developing more user-friendly tools for programmers to create components and integrating support for additional platforms.

Discussion and Future Work

• Expanding to more online platforms: Pika’s design can be easily adapted to other platforms with corresponding API integration.
• Supporting community participation in governance: Translating policy code into understandable declarative language invites non-programmers to review and provide feedback on policies.
• Crowdsourcing policy component development: Simplified tools and shared platforms can encourage programmers to contribute new components to the library.
• Further promoting end-user programming: Exploring more intuitive interfaces and real-time feedback systems to better support community policy creation.

Conclusion

Pika innovatively lowers the technical barrier for designing governance policies in online communities, enabling non-programmers to participate in the creation and review of complex policies. Through modular declarative language and a user-friendly authoring interface, Pika demonstrates its advantages in expressiveness and adaptability, laying the foundation for a more democratic approach to online community governance.