Go Community Code of Conduct

About the Code of Conduct

Why have a Code of Conduct?

Online communities include people from many different backgrounds. The Go contributors are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all, regardless of age, disability, gender, nationality, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, or similar personal characteristic.

The first goal of the Code of Conduct is to specify a baseline standard of behavior so that people with different social values and communication styles can talk about Go effectively, productively, and respectfully.

The second goal is to provide a mechanism for resolving conflicts in the community when they arise.

The third goal of the Code of Conduct is to make our community welcoming to people from different backgrounds. Diversity is critical to the project; for Go to be successful, it needs contributors and users from all backgrounds. (See Go, Open Source, Community.)

With that said, a healthy community must allow for disagreement and debate. The Code of Conduct is not a mechanism for people to silence others with whom they disagree.

Where does the Code of Conduct apply?

If you participate in or contribute to the Go ecosystem in any way, you are encouraged to follow the Code of Conduct while doing so.

Explicit enforcement of the Code of Conduct applies to the official forums operated by the Go project (“Go spaces”):

• The official GitHub projects and code reviews.
• The golang-nuts and golang-dev mailing lists.
• The #go-nuts IRC channel on Freenode.

Other Go groups (such as conferences, meetups, and other unofficial forums) are encouraged to adopt this Code of Conduct. Those groups must provide their own moderators and/or working group (see below).

Gopher values

These are the values to which people in the Go community (“Gophers”) should aspire.

• Be friendly and welcoming
• Be patient
  • Remember that people have varying communication styles and that not everyone is using their native language. (Meaning and tone can be lost in translation.)
• Be thoughtful
  • Productive communication requires effort. Think about how your words will be interpreted.
  • Remember that sometimes it is best to refrain entirely from commenting.
• Be respectful
  • In particular, respect differences of opinion.
• Be charitable
  • Interpret the arguments of others in good faith, do not seek to disagree.
  • When we do disagree, try to understand why.
• Avoid destructive behavior:
  • Derailing: stay on topic; if you want to talk about something else, start a new conversation.
  • Unconstructive criticism: don't merely decry the current state of affairs; offer—or at least solicit—suggestions as to how things may be improved.
  • Snarking (pithy, unproductive, sniping comments)
  • Discussing potentially offensive or sensitive issues; this all too often leads to unnecessary conflict.
  • Microaggressions: brief and commonplace verbal, behavioral and environmental indignities that communicate hostile, derogatory or negative slights and insults to a person or group.

People are complicated. You should expect to be misunderstood and to misunderstand others; when this inevitably occurs, resist the urge to be defensive or assign blame. Try not to take offense where no offense was intended. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Even if the intent was to provoke, do not rise to it. It is the responsibility of all parties to de-escalate conflict when it arises.

Unwelcome behavior

These actions are explicitly forbidden in Go spaces:

• Insulting, demeaning, hateful, or threatening remarks.
• Discrimination based on age, disability, gender, nationality, race, religion, sexuality, or similar personal characteristic.
• Bullying or systematic harassment.
• Unwelcome sexual advances.
• Incitement to any of these.

Moderation

The Go spaces are not free speech venues; they are for discussion about Go. Each of these spaces have their own moderators.

When using the official Go spaces you should act in the spirit of the “Gopher values”. If a reported conflict cannot be resolved amicably, the CoC Working Group may make a recommendation to the relevant forum moderators.

CoC Working Group members and forum moderators are held to a higher standard than other community members. If a working group member or moderator creates an inappropriate situation, they should expect less leeway than others, and should expect to be removed from their position if they cannot adhere to the CoC.

Complaints about working group member or moderator actions must be handled using the reporting process below.

Reporting issues

The Code of Conduct Working Group is a group of people that represent the Go community. They are responsible for handling conduct-related issues. Their purpose is to de-escalate conflicts and try to resolve issues to the satisfaction of all parties. They are:

• Aditya Mukerjee <dev@chimeracoder.net>
• Andrew Gerrand <adg@golang.org>
• Peggy Li <peggyli.224@gmail.com>
• Sarah Adams <sadams.codes@gmail.com>
• Steve Francia <steve.francia@gmail.com>
• Verónica López <gveronicalg@gmail.com>

If you encounter a conduct-related issue, you should report it to the Working Group using the process described below. Do not post about the issue publicly or try to rally sentiment against a particular individual or group.

• Mail conduct@golang.org.
  • Your message will reach the Working Group.
  • Reports are confidential within the Working Group.
  • You may contact a member of the group directly if you do not feel comfortable contacting the group as a whole. That member will then raise the issue with the Working Group as a whole, preserving the privacy of the reporter (if desired).
  • If your report concerns a member of the Working Group they will be recused from Working Group discussions of the report.
  • The Working Group will strive to handle reports with discretion and sensitivity, to protect the privacy of the involved parties, and to avoid conflicts of interest.
• You should receive a response within 48 hours (likely sooner). (Should you choose to contact a single Working Group member, it may take longer to receive a response.)
• The Working Group will meet to review the incident and determine what happened.
  • With the permission of person reporting the incident, the Working Group may reach out to other community members for more context.
• The Working Group will reach a decision as to how to act. These may include:
  • Nothing.
  • Passing the report along to the offender.
  • A recommendation of action to the relevant forum moderators.
• The Working Group will reach out to the original reporter to let them know the decision.
• Appeals to the decision may be made to the Working Group, or to any of its members directly.

Note that the goal of the Code of Conduct and the Working Group is to resolve conflicts in the most harmonious way possible. We hope that in most cases issues may be resolved through polite discussion and mutual agreement.

Changes to the Code of Conduct (including to the members of the Working Group) should be proposed using the change proposal process.

Summary

• Treat everyone with respect and kindness.
• Be thoughtful in how you communicate.
• Don’t be destructive or inflammatory.
• If you encounter an issue, please mail conduct@golang.org.

Acknowledgements

Parts of this document were derived from the Code of Conduct documents of the Django, FreeBSD, and Rust projects.