Hi everyone! I am Shanee and I’m with Open@RIT. We have been working with Prof. Steven Yi on developing community guidelines and resources to streamline contributions and community engagement. While we are new to the Csound community, many of our recommendations come from popular open source theory such as Nadia Eghbal’s Working in Public book. These suggestions are simply recommendations from us and we hope to start some productive conversations around how we can create a better and more effective Csound community.
Code of Conduct & Rules
We recommend having a single Code of Conduct referenced in every community space that members interact with. This includes (but is not limited to) chat servers, github repositories, and mailing list signups. On places such as github, this should be its own document, separate from the README and Contribution Guidelines.
There are two main benefits from having a Code of Conduct. One is that it will increase the quality of social interactions and make the contributing process more comfortable for people within your community. The second is it will encourage users to complete the full contribution process and help create a community of contributors who are excited about making additions to the project. Codes of Conduct can be a useful tool for communities to ensure a certain standard for respectful interaction between community members and provide clear instructions for what to do when those standards are violated.
Additionally, there are some important items not present in the discord Code of Conduct that should be included in any future Code of Conduct. First, they should address how the Codes are enforced if anyone breaks them. We found a good example of a Code of Conduct that includes such content that you should consider for inspiration, here: Contributor Covenant:. We suggest that when you enact a Code of Conduct that you have a serious discussion with members of your community to choose who will be best able to enforce infractions.
Secondly, you may want your Code of Conduct to explicitly emphasize proper responses to people’s questions and contribution ideas. Some people who want to contribute have been discouraged from doing so by instances where they put their idea out and somebody would respond negatively based on their own personal opinions.