[Proposal] Project code of conduct

[lizthegrey]

After having seen a fair amount of incivility on IRC and on the project forums, I feel that it would be appropriate for us to define as a community standards for behavior in order to make the community a more welcoming place for all people regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, etc. Many other prominent open source projects such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Apache, OLPC have codes of conduct.

This is important in order to ensure that Bitcoin becomes mainstream and is used by a wide range of users and is accepting of contributions from developers that might otherwise feel harassed, threatened, or marginalized.

Modeled after https://launchpad.net/codeofconduct/1.1

Code:

=Bitcoin Code of Conduct v1.1=

This Code of Conduct covers our behaviour as members of the Bitcoin
Community, in any forum, mailing list, wiki, web site, IRC channel,
public meeting or private correspondence between community members.
Project developers, channel ops, and forum moderators will arbitrate in
any dispute over the conduct of a member of the community.

      '''Be considerate.''' Our work will be used by other people, and
      we in turn will depend on the work of others. Any decision we take
      will affect users and colleagues, and we should take those
      consequences into account when making decisions.  Bitcoin has
      hundreds of thousands of users and hundreds of contributors. Even
      if it's not obvious at the time, our contributions to Bitcoin will impact
      the work of others.  For example, changes to code, infrastructure,
      policy, documentation, and translations during a release may
      negatively impact others' work.

      '''Be respectful.''' The Bitcoin community and its members treat
      one another with respect. Everyone can make a valuable
      contribution to Bitcoin. We may not always agree, but disagreement
      is no excuse for poor behaviour and poor manners. We might all
      experience some frustration now and then, but we cannot allow that
      frustration to turn into a personal attack. It's important to
      remember that a community where people feel uncomfortable or
      threatened is not a productive one. We expect members of the
      Bitcoin community to be respectful when dealing with other
      contributors as well as with people outside the Bitcoin project and
      with users of Bitcoin.

      '''Be collaborative.''' Collaboration is central to Bitcoin and to
      the larger free software community.  This collaboration involves
      individuals working with others in teams within Bitcoin, teams
      working with each other within Bitcoin, and individuals and teams
      within Bitcoin working with other projects outside. This
      collaboration reduces redundancy, and improves the quality of our
      work. Internally and externally, we should always be open to
      collaboration. Wherever possible, we should work closely with
      upstream projects and others in the free software community to
      coordinate our technical, advocacy, documentation, and other work.
      Our work should be done transparently and we should involve as
      many interested parties as early as possible.  If we decide to
      take a different approach than others, we will let them know early,
      document our work and inform others regularly of our progress.

      '''When we disagree, we consult others.''' Disagreements, both
      social and technical, happen all the time and the Bitcoin
      community is no exception. It is important that we resolve
      disagreements and differing views constructively and with the help
      of the community and community processes. When our goals
      differ dramatically, we encourage the creation of alternative sets of
      packages, or derivative software so that the community can test
      new ideas and contribute to the discussion.

      '''When we are unsure, we ask for help.''' Nobody knows
      everything, and nobody is expected to be perfect in the Bitcoin
      community. Asking questions avoids many problems down the road,
      and so questions are encouraged. Those who are asked questions should
      be responsive and helpful. However, when asking a question, care must
      be taken to do so in an appropriate forum.

      '''Step down considerately.''' Members of every project come and
      go and Bitcoin is no different. When somebody leaves or disengages
      from the project, in whole or in part, we ask that they do so in a
      way that minimises disruption to the project. This means they
      should tell people they are leaving and take the proper steps to
      ensure that others can pick up where they left off.

We pride ourselves on building a productive, happy and agile community
that can welcome new ideas in a complex field, and foster collaboration
between groups with very different needs, interests and goals.

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[zer0]

any developer who can't handle neckbeards being neckbeards in IRC should kill themselves
i just violated your code of conduct

[Mike Hearn]

+1, yes please. The forum/IRC is sometimes becoming less useful because of trolling by people who aren't actually doing any work.

The proposed code sounds OK, but having some basic (enforced) civility is more important than the details.

[lumos]

don't police.
all information is good information, information is entropy and leads to more complex outcomes>
to maximize human race entropy, people shouldn't not kill, not delete, disperse to other planets.
leads to more improbable and varied outcomes, little logistic maps are started more often. and the grand fractal is consolidated.

although trolls represent a short term loss to you, they could make one joke and then say something that changes your life, people have alot of potential energy. best to have everything open because of this.

[MyFarm]

The best solution is to lead by example.  "Be the change you want to see in the world."

[Chris Acheson]

I think this is a good idea, but it will probably encounter a lot of resistance.

[Chris Acheson]

I'm bumping this topic because it deserves consideration, especially in light of recent events.

I wrote in this thread:

I generally agree with what Jessy Kang has written, however the problem that needed to be addressed was that a lot of the newcomers were abusive.  It's fine to be skeptical, but a level of civility still needs to be maintained.  We don't want the Greater Internet Fuckwads driving away the genuinely curious and interested newcomers (along with everyone else, for that matter).

Unfortunately, a lot of libertarians (the dominant faction around here) feel the need to apply "laissez faire" to forum moderation policy, so I expect getting anything like this implemented will be an uphill battle.

[TradersEdgeDice]

As I mentioned in another thread, maybe it's time to focus bitcoin.org like a typical open source project forum and leave anything outside of the focus to other sites.

bitcoin.org can set up a wiki page where any site running a bitcoin forum can list themselves.

That particular thread has some pure psycho comments about free speech.

There's free speech and there is being a troll.  This site was slammed with trolls during the price collapse from $30.00 to $13.00.  And such behavior is rising with media exposure.

There are enough bitcoin advocates for bitcoin.org to divest itself of hosting anything but discussions most pertinent to the project.

By decentralizing discussion, propaganda attacks become very difficult if not impossible.  With everybody coming to bitcoin.org, it's too easy to disrupt the flow of information.

Nobody's going to the treasury department or the Federal Reserve websites to discuss the U.S. dollar.  Nobody's going to AMD or nVidia sites for quality information about over clocking and other assorted hardware hacks.

There are robust markets for those kind of information.

They don't even need to shut this one down.  They can just start a thread listing other bitcoin forums and encourage people to patronize them.

[Jessy Kang]

As I mentioned in another thread, maybe it's time to focus bitcoin.org like a typical open source project forum and leave anything outside of the focus to other sites.

bitcoin.org can set up a wiki page where any site running a bitcoin forum can list themselves.

An excellent suggestion. I agree but think that for other sites to thrive bitcoin.org should, as suggested eventually try to limit its scope to core Bitcoin functionality and architecture issues.

An excellent point as well regarding the social engineering and single point failure vulnerabilities inherent in the current format.

[lizthegrey]

As I mentioned in another thread, maybe it's time to focus bitcoin.org like a typical open source project forum and leave anything outside of the focus to other sites.

bitcoin.org can set up a wiki page where any site running a bitcoin forum can list themselves.

An excellent suggestion. I agree but think that for other sites to thrive bitcoin.org should, as suggested eventually try to limit its scope to core Bitcoin functionality and architecture issues.

An excellent point as well regarding the social engineering and single point failure vulnerabilities inherent in the current format.

Also agreed - it would be good to have bitcoin.org officially sanctioned discussion be solely about development efforts, and leave other community-building to a variety of different user-operated fora.

[genewitch]

As I mentioned in another thread, maybe it's time to focus bitcoin.org like a typical open source project forum and leave anything outside of the focus to other sites.

bitcoin.org can set up a wiki page where any site running a bitcoin forum can list themselves.

An excellent suggestion. I agree but think that for other sites to thrive bitcoin.org should, as suggested eventually try to limit its scope to core Bitcoin functionality and architecture issues.

An excellent point as well regarding the social engineering and single point failure vulnerabilities inherent in the current format.

Also agreed - it would be good to have bitcoin.org officially sanctioned discussion be solely about development efforts, and leave other community-building to a variety of different user-operated fora.

You know there's winners abound when the very idea that people should be civil on a forum leads to trolling in the very thread it is brought up in.

The internet is ruined forever.