Hello all,
As the Solus project and our community continues to grow and mature, it is important to occasionally re-assess how everyone in the community engages, from forum posters to Team members, and make changes based on lessons learned and experiences gained. In this proposal, my goal is to provide an up-to-date and expanded set of policies / guidelines to meet the needs of the Solus project. I am wanting to bring this proposal directly to all of you, to get your thoughts and any feedback to help improve, expand, or clarify this Code of Conduct. While our original Community Guidelines provided a good initial framework on how community and team members were expected to conduct themselves, it did not express any clear policies on how to resolve violations in a manner that is consistent, missed necessary information on some Solus services, and did not provide any means to meaningfully resolve issues with or between Solus community or team members in a manner that is or should be adjudicated by an independent third-party.
The proposed updated Code of Conduct (transformed from a mere "Community Guidelines" with vague "Solus team reserves the right to [...]"), is aimed at addressing various feedback provided by all of you, as well as aforementioned issues, by:
- Establishing recommendations on how specific types of violations should be handled via our Impact Guidelines (inspired by Contributor Covenant). While it is not expected to be completely comprehensive, as there is nuance in the behavior of individuals, circumstance, etc. -- it should provide pathways to resolving issues in a manner that is more apparent to all parties involved.
- Sets forth guidelines of expected conduct on the Solus forums, especially with regards to post “necroing” (the act of bringing an otherwise “dead” forum post back to life). tldr for that one is "when it doubt, make a new post"
- Proposes a Code of Conduct Committee to handle reported issues of conduct from the community, whether that be of other community members or Solus team members. This Code of Conduct sets forth a series of rules for both the Solus Team and Code of Conduct Committee to follow with regards to potential violations or disputes, to ensure the most fair process for all parties involved.
This Code of Conduct builds on our existing work on our Community Guidelines in addition to works such as:
I'd like to extend my appreciation to those projects for providing the building blocks for our Code of Conduct and working to keep open source engagement lively and welcoming.
I would like to stress that this document does not declare any individuals to be members of the Code of Conduct Committee, and while it does not stipulate a specific amount of individuals, I believe it would be in the project's interest to have at least three (3) Committee members, with growth to always being an "odd" number of members (e.g. 5) to reduce the likelihood of any even splits in decisions. It is crucial that more than one (1) member be active as well, since otherwise I am just shifting most of the emotional and mental burden (personal experience in this being some inspiration for this update) to another, singular individual, which would not be fair. If you are an active member of the Solus community, especially in IRC, and believe you would be a good fit as a Committee member, I would appreciate if you would DM me via IRC or Matrix (if via IRC, preferably to my Matrix nick which is joshuastrobl[m] / @joshuastrobl:matrix.org) and I will strive to respond as soon as possible (bearing in mind it is the weekend, so I might want a bit of R&R 😃 ).
This Code of Conduct does not establish any technicalities like how email distribution happens (for example, through some form of a Google Apps distribution list), nor how reports are stored. These technicalities can be worked on by Team, Globals, and Committee members alike to best work for all parties involved and best safeguard the privacy of others. As a reminder, this is a proposal, and doesn't establish when precisely it would be enacted, rather gives a clear picture to the community on prioritizing of this.
Link to Google Docs (view-only)
Link to PDF (may not be updated based on changes in Docs, since it is a manual process)
