Importance of Codes of Conduct

Codes of conduct for software projects are incredibly important because they help set the tone for expected behavior and ensure a vibrant, positive community. Ultimately, they establish the values of a project, escalation paths for conflicts, and guidelines for communication, while also deterring bad actors.

Investigating Different Codes of Conduct

Go’s code of conduct embodies what makes a strong document. It clearly outlines the project’s standards and how they will be enforced. Notably, it goes beyond the cookie-cutter template provided by the Contributor Covenant by listing specific values while also encouraging healthy disagreement. Go’s code of conduct doesn’t intend to create perfect harmony, but rather respectful discourse, which they continuously reinforce throughout their code of conduct with language like “respect differences of opinion” and “When we do disagree, try to understand why.”

Eclipse’s code of conduct is relatively similar to both Go’s and the Contributor Covenant template, but it goes further in depth about the conflict resolution process, naming a specific committee, how violations are investigated, repercussions, and how they prevent retaliatory behavior. This is probably due to the scale and complexity of Eclipse compared to Go, but I appreciate the clarity and transparency it provides. It should honestly be satndard, because in order for people to feel encouraged to report inappropriate behavior there needs to be clear next steps.

Another similar code of conduct is iNaturalist’s. This code of conduct is even more explicit than the previous two, outlining unacceptable behaviors like all caps, sarcasm with people that you don’t know, dismissing others because “they’re just a kid,” etc. It’s clear that the code of conduct is grounded in past conflicts and has taken the time to list out what they’ve deemed problematic. Although they spend less time on conflict escalation, they’re extremely explicit in what one should or should not do, making the need for conflict escalation probably slim. I appreciate the level of detail in this code of conduct, especially because I’d probably engage in some “bad behavior” without even realizing it. So, if I were to use iNaturalist, I would either need to ensure a mindset shift with behaviors that I am guilty of (like sarcasm) or understand that I am not the best contributor and find a different project to work on.

While the previous codes of conduct are based on the Contributor Covenant, Sugar Labs’ is based on Ubuntu’s. It is less explicit in escalation paths, who to contact, and is overall more open to interpretation. This might be because (a) the nature of the project itself is educational and less likely to attract bad actors that would sexually harass other contributors, so they might not feel the need to state that explicitly, and (b) the scale of the project is smaller.