Code-of-Conduct.md

Verizon Media Open Source Code of Conduct

Summary

This Code of Conduct is our way to encourage good behavior and discourage bad behavior in our open source community. We invite participation from many people to bring different perspectives to support this project. We pledge to do our part to foster a welcoming and professional environment free of harassment. We expect participants to communicate professionally and thoughtfully during their involvement with this project.

Participants may lose their good standing by engaging in misconduct. For example: insulting, threatening, or conveying unwelcome sexual content. We ask participants who observe conduct issues to report the incident directly to the project's Response Team at opensource-conduct@verizonmedia.com. Verizon Media will assign a respondent to address the issue. We may remove harassers from this project.

This code does not replace the terms of service or acceptable use policies of the websites used to support this project. We acknowledge that participants may be subject to additional conduct terms based on their employment which may govern their online expressions.

Details

This Code of Conduct makes our expectations of participants in this community explicit.

• We forbid harassment and abusive speech within this community.
• We request participants to report misconduct to the project’s Response Team.
• We urge participants to refrain from using discussion forums to play out a fight.

Expected Behaviors

We expect participants in this community to conduct themselves professionally. Since our primary mode of communication is text on an online forum (e.g. issues, pull requests, comments, emails, or chats) devoid of vocal tone, gestures, or other context that is often vital to understanding, it is important that participants are attentive to their interaction style.

• Assume positive intent. We ask community members to assume positive intent on the part of other people’s communications. We may disagree on details, but we expect all suggestions to be supportive of the community goals.
• Respect participants. We expect participants will occasionally disagree. Even if we reject an idea, we welcome everyone’s participation. Open Source projects are learning experiences. Ask, explore, challenge, and then respectfully assert if you agree or disagree. If your idea is rejected, be more persuasive not bitter.
• Welcoming to new members. New members bring new perspectives. Some may raise questions that have been addressed before. Kindly point them to existing discussions. Everyone is new to every project once.
• Be kind to beginners. Beginners 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 engage kindly.
• Consider your impact on others. Your work will be used by others, and you depend on the work of others. We expect community members to be considerate and establish a balance their self-interest with communal interest.
• Use words carefully. We may not understand intent when you say something ironic. Poe’s Law suggests that without an emoticon people will misinterpret sarcasm. We ask community members to communicate plainly.
• Leave with class. When you wish to resign from participating in this project for any reason, you are free to fork the code and create a competitive project. Open Source explicitly allows this. Your exit should not be dramatic or bitter.

Unacceptable Behaviors

Participants remain in good standing when they do not engage in misconduct or harassment. To elaborate:

• Don't be a bigot. Calling out project members by their identity or background in a negative or insulting manner. This includes, but is not limited to, slurs or insinuations related to protected or suspect classes e.g. race, color, citizenship, national origin, political belief, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, age, size, culture, ethnicity, genetic features, language, profession, national minority statue, mental or physical ability.
• Don't insult. Insulting remarks about a person’s lifestyle practices.
• Don't dox. Revealing private information about other participants without explicit permission.
• Don't intimidate. Threats of violence or intimidation of any project member.
• Don't creep. Unwanted sexual attention or content unsuited for the subject of this project.
• Don't disrupt. Sustained disruptions in a discussion.
• Let us help. Refusal to assist the Response Team to resolve an issue in the community.

We do not list all forms of harassment, nor imply some forms of harassment are not worthy of action. Any participant who feels harassed or observes harassment, should report the incident. Victim of harassment should not address grievances in the public forum, as this often intensifies the problem. Report it, and let us address it off-line.

Reporting Issues

If you experience or witness misconduct, or have any other concerns about the conduct of members of this project, please report it by contacting our Response Team at opensource-conduct@verizonmedia.com who will handle your report with discretion. Your report should include:

• Your preferred contact information. We cannot process anonymous reports.
• Names (real or usernames) of those involved in the incident.
• Your account of what occurred, and if the incident is ongoing. Please provide links to or transcripts of the publicly available records (e.g. a mailing list archive or a public IRC logger), so that we can review it.
• Any additional information that may be helpful to achieve resolution.

After filing a report, a representative will contact you directly to review the incident and ask additional questions. If a member of the Verizon Media Response Team is named in an incident report, that member will be recused from handling your incident. If the complaint originates from a member of the Response Team, it will be addressed by a different member of the Response Team. We will consider reports to be confidential for the purpose of protecting victims of abuse.

Scope

Verizon Media will assign a Response Team member with admin rights on the project and legal rights on the project copyright. The Response Team is empowered to restrict some privileges to the project as needed. Since this project is governed by an open source license, any participant may fork the code under the terms of the project license. The Response Team’s goal is to preserve the project if possible, and will restrict or remove participation from those who disrupt the project.

This code does not replace the terms of service or acceptable use policies that are provided by the websites used to support this community. Nor does this code apply to communications or actions that take place outside of the context of this community. Many participants in this project are also subject to codes of conduct based on their employment. This code is a social-contract that informs participants of our social expectations. It is not a terms of service or legal contract.

License and Acknowledgment.

This text is shared under the CC-BY-4.0 license. This code is based on a study conducted by the TODO Group of many codes used in the open source community. If you have feedback about this code, contact our Response Team at the address listed above.