# Community — Smoower Index methodology

> Do outside contributors get answers, and do their changes land?

Weight: ~16% of overall.

Measures responsiveness and contributor health: issue and PR reply times, median merge time, external contributor share, discussion activity, sentiment across public channels, and community programs.

The fork ecosystem signal sits inside this pillar. It combines median merge time, median issue response time, the share of forks that turn into contributions, and the contributor on-ramp checklist (CONTRIBUTING.md, code of conduct, issue and PR templates, good-first-issue labels).

| Sub-metric | What is read |
| --- | --- |
| Responsiveness | Median first reply on issues, median PR merge time |
| Fork ecosystem | Forks that contribute back, on-ramp files present |
| External contributors | Share of commits from outside the org |
| Sentiment | Tone of public mentions and discussions |

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HTML version: https://www.smoower.com/docs/community
Machine index: https://www.smoower.com/llms.txt · MCP server: https://www.smoower.com/mcp · REST API: https://www.smoower.com/api/v1
All pillars: https://www.smoower.com/docs.md