Creating a Code of Conduct

Hi all,

Any community large or small, real or virtual, run into challenges sometimes. Communitynetworks.group was set up with the intention of welcoming people from a wide variety of backgrounds, expertise, cultures, languages, timezones, and points of view. Diversity can only deepen our knowledge of community networks and of the world at large. But even with the clearest communication, misunderstandings are inevitable. Online communities are far from perfect when it comes to communication and it is important for any online community to recognise these challenges and be prepared for them.

It is with this in mind that I am starting this thread to build a consensus around a Code of Conduct for communitynetworks.group that everyone is comfortable with. Discourse, the software platform on which this community runs, has a default Terms of Service but that is more of a legal document intended to protect a single organisation hosting Discourse.

A Code of Conduct is more an agreement about how we are going to treat each other in this community. It is something we haven’t needed yet but it is the sort of thing that is important to have in place before it is needed.

With that in mind, I thought it would be useful to see what we can learn from other Codes of Conduct on the internet. I recently came across Basecamp’s Guide to Internal Communication which has a lot of good advice but is oriented towards team work in particular. I also like the group policy from Loomio an Open Source decision-making software platform and cooperative.

Have you seen any community rules or codes of conduct that inspired you?

That is very true @ Song. Perfection can only be accessed in a vacuum!

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Here’s another Code of Conduct from a the newly-created Open Source Community Africa (OSCA) group https://github.com/oscafrica/documentation/blob/master/src/OSCA_Code_of_Conduct.md which is itself modeled on the Ubuntu Code of Conduct https://ubuntu.com/community/code-of-conduct The OSCA CoC differs in one significant way from the Ubuntu CoC in that it is very specific upfront about consequences for violating the Code of Conduct.

Thank you Steve, for starting this threat. There’s a Telegram group in Spanish called Libera tu Radio for Free Software Broadcasting, with more than 300 people. Here’s their code of conduct: https://telegra.ph/Netiqueta-Libera-tu-Radio-12-12. Some elements are useful! How would this code of conduct be written? Any ideas?

In Cape Town, there is the Unashamedly Ethical initiative. Possibly, their inputs can be helpful too: http://unashamedlyethical.com/commitments/

Thanks @steve for starting this thread.
I really like Loomio’s Community group guidelines… they are simple to understand.
The issue is that they lack clear ways of knowing you have broke them… maybe some examples could suffice.