This Code of Conduct outlines our expectations for participants within the Studician community. Our goal is to make explicit what we expect from participants in this community as well as its leaders. Open Source projects thrive on diverse perspectives. If one smart developer could code the whole project, we’d just hire that developer to write all the code. In reality, complex projects require a diverse perspectives; which you only get when you invite dissimilar people to participate in the group. When you bring people from different backgrounds together on complex projects tensions arise, sometimes leading to verbal abuse and even threats of violence. Establishing a Code of Conduct is one way to signify this project values the perspectives of many. We are committed to ensuring participants have an effective method of escalating reports of misconduct so that we can maintain a productive community for all participants.
We expect participants in this community to conduct themselves professionally. Since our primary mode of communication is text on an online forum (e.g. issue, pull request, comment, email, or chat text) devoid of vocal tone, gestures, or other context that is often vital to understanding, it is especially important that you convey these attitudes in text. This includes the following behaviors:
- Welcoming to new members - everyone is new to every project once. New members bring fresh perspectives. Many will raised questions that have been addressed before, You can point them to existing discussions for them to get up to speed.
- Be kind to beginners (and to everyone else). They use open source projects to get experience. They might not be talented coders yet, and projects should not accept poor quality code. But we were all beginners once, and we need to to reject code with kindness.
- Use words carefully. We ask community members to communicate plainly.
- Assume positive intent. When someone posts something we expect community members will assume positive intent on the part of the post. We may choose to disagree with the idea and reject the suggestion, but we expect that it was made in order to be supportive of the community goals.
- Respectful to participants. We expect participants will disagree on aspects of this project. Disagreements must remain professional. Even if we reject someone’s idea, we continue to welcome their participation. And if your idea is rejected, be more persuasive not bitter.
- Seek to understand. Open Source projects can be learning experiences. When someone poses something you find disagreeable or you don’t understand it, inquire about it. Ask, explore, challenge, and then assert if you agree or disagree.
- Exit with class. There may come a time where you stop believing in the project direction or get frustrated with the project leaders. You are always free to fork the code and create a competitive project. Open Source explicitly accommodates this. It does not have to be dramatic or bitter. Sometimes you just walk away, and it’s OK.
Participants in this open source community remain in good standing when they do not conduct themselves in a manner that violates this Code of Conduct. Misconduct includes but is not limited to:
- Calling out project members by their identity or background in a deliberately negative or insulting manner. This includes but is not limited to slurs or insinuations related to protected or suspect classes such as race, color, citizenship, national origin, political belief, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, age, size, culture, ethnicity, genetic features, language, profession, membership of a national minority, mental or physical ability.
- Insulting remarks about a person’s lifestyle practices.
- Threats of violence or intimidation on any project member.
- Sustained disruption of discussion.
- Repeated harassment of others.
- Unwelcome sexual attention.
- Advocating for, or encouraging, any of the above behavior.
We cannot list all forms of harassment in an exhaustive manner, nor do we seek to declare some forms of harassment as benign or not worthy of action. Rather, if a project member feels harassed we ask they report the incident. The incident will be recorded and addressed. Furthermore we insist that the victim of this harassment not address the issue in the forum in public, as this tends to intensify the problem for the parties in question and for the community as a whole.
If you experience or witness misconduct, or have any other concerns about the conduct of members of this project, please report it by contacting us via [email protected]. All reports will be handled with discretion. We ask that your report include:
- Your preferred contact information so we can reach out to you in case of questions. We cannot process anonymous reports.
- Names (real or username) of those involved in the incident.
- Your account of what occurred, and if you believe the incident is ongoing. If there is a publicly available record (e.g. a mailing list archive or a public IRC logger), please provide the link so that we can review it.
- Any additional information that may be helpful.
We respect the confidentiality of all requests for the purpose of protecting victims of abuse. Anyone asked to stop unacceptable behavior is expected to comply immediately. If an individual engages in unacceptable behavior, the representative may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including a permanent ban from our community without warning.
This code of conduct is based on the Open Code of Conduct from the TODOGroup.