# Together or Apart? Investigating a mediator bot to aggregate bot's comments on pull requests

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.01624 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01624/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 2 Aug 2022.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [The Future of AI-Driven Software Engineering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07737/) (2024)
- [Motivations, Challenges, Best Practices, and Benefits for Bots and Conversational Agents in Software Engineering: A Multivocal Literature Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.11864/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Software bots connect users and tools, streamlining the pull request review process in social coding platforms. However, bots can introduce information overload into developers' communication. Information overload is especially problematic for newcomers, who are still exploring the project and may feel overwhelmed by the number of messages. Inspired by the literature of other domains, we designed and evaluated FunnelBot, a bot that acts as a mediator between developers and other bots in the repository. We conducted a within-subject study with 25 newcomers to capture their perceptions and preferences. Our results provide insights for bot developers who want to mitigate noise and create bots for supporting newcomers, laying a foundation for designing better bots.