A code of conduct is a document which sets out expectations for members of a community, with regard to how they will behave toward each other.
Contents
Effective codes of conduct
Important elements of an effective code of conduct include:
- Specific descriptions of common but unacceptable behavior (sexist jokes, etc.)
- Reporting instructions with contact information
- Information about how it may be enforced
- A clear demarcation between unacceptable behaviour (which may be reported per the reporting instructions and may have severe consequences for the perpetrator) and community guidelines such as general disagreement resolution.
Codes of conduct which lack any one of these items tend not to have the intended effect. See HOWTO design a code of conduct for your community article for more information.
Evaluations of codes of conduct
Communities/projects/etc which have a code of conduct include: (Please list projects in alphabetical order.)
| Organization | License | Descriptions of common but unacceptable behavior? | Reporting instructions with contact information? | Information about enforcement? | Clear demarcation between anti-harassment policy and more general community guidelines |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Citizen Code of Conduct | CC-BY-SA | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Contributor Covenant | MIT | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Debian | MIT/GPL | No | Some | Some | |
| Django | CC BY | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Drupal | No | Yes | No | No | |
| Fedora | No | No | No | ||
| FreeBSD | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes - included in same list but unacceptable behaviour is also listed there. | |
| Geek Feminism (see also resources for adopting it) (recommended) | Public domain | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes (only contains anti-harrassment language) |
| GNOME | No | No | No (explicitly states code of conduct will not be enforced) | No | |
| Go | CC BY | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Joomla (derived from Ubuntu CoC) | No | No | No | ||
| Julia | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes - included in same list but unacceptable behaviour is also listed there. | |
| KDE | Some | No | Some | No | |
| Mozilla | CC BY-SA | No | Some | No | No |
| OpenStack Foundation | Some | No |
No |
||
| PostgreSQL | No | No | No | No | |
| Puppet Community (derived from Ubuntu CoC) | Some | Sort of | Yes | ||
| Python | No | No | No | ||
| Ruby | No | No | No | No | |
| Rust | Yes | Yes | Some | Yes - included in same list but unacceptable behaviour is all grouped at the end. | |
| Slack | CC BY-SA | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Sugar | Some | No | No | No | |
| TODO Group Open Code of Conduct | CC-BY | Yes, expanded after this PR | Yes | Yes | Yes - the CoC is a mashup of several previous works, but much of the language is from the recommended GF CoC. |
| The Tor Project | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes - included in same list but unacceptable behaviour is also listed there. | |
| TTS (U.S. government) (derived from GF CoC and Recurse Center) (recommended) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| TwitterOSS (derived from Python, Ubuntu, and Mozilla) | No | No | No | ||
| TYPO3 (derived from Ubuntu CoC) | No | No | No | ||
| Ubuntu | CC BY-SA | No | No | No | No |
Related lists of guidelines
Not quite project codes of conduct, but related community statements:
Codes of conduct and policies for your community
See:
Further reading
- A Reddit thread on Rust's code of conduct: "The exaggerated reframing of these matters in terms of existential struggles for human liberty against tyrannical censors suggests overall bad faith." -- user graydon2
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