Hackers

Learning, collaboration and reputation

Hackers often learn by working directly with systems and exchanging knowledge with peers. Mailing lists, chat channels, code repositories, forums, electronic publications, and shared workshops are used for questions, code review, publication, and testing. Large free-software projects may have maintainers, membership procedures, contributor review, and voting. Elite security-hacker groups have sometimes limited sensitive information to trusted members who demonstrated technical ability. Hacker activity is often social and organized around projects, conferences, and groups.