WOS Code of Conduct

Introduction

This code of conduct applies to all spaces managed by WOS, including all public and private mailing lists, issue trackers, wikis, blogs, Twitter, and any other communication channel used by our community.

This code of conduct should be honored by everyone who participates in the WOS community formally or informally, or claims any affiliation with the project, in any project-related activities and especially when representing the project, in any role.

This code is not exhaustive or complete. It serves to distill our common understanding of a collaborative, shared environment and goals. Please try to follow this code in spirit as much as in letter, to create a friendly and productive environment that enriches the surrounding community.

Specific Guidelines

We strive to:

Be open. We invite anyone to participate in our community. We prefer to use public methods of communication for project-related messages, unless discussing something sensitive. This applies to messages for help or project-related support, too; not only is a public support request much more likely to result in an answer to a question, it also ensures that any inadvertent mistakes in answering are more easily detected and corrected.
Be empathetic, welcoming, friendly, and patient. We work together to resolve conflict, and assume good intentions. We may all experience some frustration from time to time, but we do not allow frustration to turn into a personal attack. A community where people feel uncomfortable or threatened is not a productive one.
Be collaborative. Our work will be used by other people, and in turn we will depend on the work of others. When we make something for the benefit of the project, we are willing to explain to others how it works, so that they can build on the work to make it even better. Any decision we make will affect users and colleagues, and we take those consequences seriously when making decisions.
Be inquisitive. Nobody knows everything! Asking questions early avoids many problems later, so we encourage questions, although we may direct them to the appropriate forum. We will try hard to be responsive and helpful.
Be careful in the words that we choose. We are careful and respectful in our communication and we take responsibility for our own speech. Be kind to others. Do not insult or put down other participants. We will not accept harassment or other exclusionary behaviour, such as:

Avoid these:

Violent threats or language directed against another person.
Sexist, racist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
Posting sexually explicit or violent material.
Posting (or threatening to post) other people’s personally identifying information (“doxing”).
Sharing private content, such as emails sent privately or non-publicly, or unlogged forums such as IRC channel history, without the sender’s consent.
Personal insults, especially those using racist or sexist terms.
Unwelcome sexual attention.
Excessive profanity. Please avoid swearwords; people differ greatly in their sensitivity to swearing.
Repeated harassment of others. In general, if someone asks you to stop, then stop.
Advocating for, or encouraging, any of the above behaviour.

Diversity Statement

WOS welcomes and encourages participation by everyone. We are committed to being a community that everyone enjoys being part of. Although we may not always be able to accommodate each individual’s preferences, we try our best to treat everyone kindly.

No matter how you identify yourself or how others perceive you: we welcome you. Though no list can hope to be comprehensive, we explicitly honour diversity in: age, culture, ethnicity, genotype, gender identity or expression, language, national origin, neurotype, phenotype, political beliefs, profession, race, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, subculture and technical ability, to the extent that these do not conflict with this code of conduct.

Though we welcome people fluent in all languages, development at WOS is conducted in English.

Standards for behaviour in the WOS community are detailed in the Code of Conduct above. Participants in our community should uphold these standards in all their interactions and help others to do so as well (see next section).

Reporting Guidelines

We know that it is painfully common for internet communication to start at or devolve into obvious and flagrant abuse. We also recognize that sometimes people may have a bad day, or be unaware of some of the guidelines in this Code of Conduct. Please keep this in mind when deciding on how to respond to a breach of this Code.

For clearly intentional breaches, report those to the Code of Conduct committee (see below). For possibly unintentional breaches, you may reply to the person and point out this code of conduct (either in public or in private, whatever is most appropriate). If you would prefer not to do that, please feel free to report to the Code of Conduct Committee directly, or ask the Committee for advice, in confidence.

You can report issues to any of our mentors or organization admins.

If your report involves any members of the committee, or if they feel they have a conflict of interest in handling it, then they will recuse themselves from considering your report. Alternatively, if for any reason you feel uncomfortable making a report to the committee, then you can also contact:

Incident reporting resolution & Code of Conduct enforcement

This section summarizes the most important points, more details can be found in WOS Code of Conduct - How to follow up on a report.

We will investigate and respond to all complaints. The WOS Code of Conduct Committee will protect the identity of the reporter, and treat the content of complaints as confidential (unless the reporter agrees otherwise).

In case of severe and obvious breaches, e.g. personal threat or violent, sexist or racist language, we will immediately disconnect the originator from WOS communication channels.

In cases not involving clear severe and obvious breaches of this code of conduct, the process for acting on any received code of conduct violation report will be:

acknowledge report is received
reasonable discussion/feedback
The committee will respond to any report as soon as possible, and at most within 72 hours.

Endnotes

We are thankful to the groups behind the following documents, from which we drew content and inspiration: