Version 5 supported

Silverstripe CMS community code of conduct

These guidelines aim to be an aspirational ideal for how we should behave when interacting in the Silverstripe CMS developer community and to aid in building great open source software.

This code of conduct should be applied to all discussions and interactions involving Silverstripe CMS and its related resources.

Honour the code of conduct whenever you participate formally and informally in our community and follow it in spirit as much as in letter.

Be open, collaborative and curious

Experiment with your code and share the results.
Ask questions if you get stuck.
If you can answer questions, be responsive and help guide others towards solutions.
Share code and knowledge that might help others.
The community is first and foremost about people sharing their knowledge to build something great together.

Be empathetic, friendly and considerate

Welcome and encourage participation from everyone that wishes to join and contribute to our community.
Remember, growing the community socially is just as important as code related matters.
Be respectful and honour diversity in our community. Sexist, racist, and other exclusionary jokes can offend those around you and are not appropriate.
Keep your actions lawful, non-discriminatory, and unthreatening towards others.

Respect the reader’s time

Be concise and read over things before you post.
Mind your words; you write a single time but what you write will be read by many. Being abusive, mean spirited and swearing at others do nothing to help get your points across nor do they drive constructive collaboration and hence stimulate contributions to open source.
Be clear about who you are representing when responding; are you speaking on behalf of another business or acting in your capacity as an individual community member? Either is fine and both are encouraged. Just make it clear to the reader.

Respect different levels of participation

Welcome newcomers. Spend some time helping them to get orientated in our community.
All contributors and core committers, module maintainers and knowledge sharers are participating in the community in a voluntary nature. Have respect for them and their time when making requests. You may need to exercise some patience.
Whenever possible, reference your comments to others with example code or links to documentation. This helps people learn and become more experienced community members and developers.
If you manage to solve your own problem, tell others how you solved it. This will help people in the future who have to solve similar problems.
If you are reducing your input, and potentially stepping away from the community, please remember that others might be relying on your contributions. Be prepared to ensure your contributions remain open and available to the community. Spend some time handing your contributions over to another community member or core contributor to help with the continuity of Silverstripe CMS open source development.

Resolve conflicts directly

Conflict may eventuate from time to time. We should all try to view it as a constructive process. Understanding others' positions, without descending into ad hominem attacks, is valuable and may lead to better solutions to problems.
Involve a 3rd party. If necessary, inform a core committer if a conflict continues to escalate.
Breaches of the code of conduct by a community member may result in a first reminder about the code of conduct (we realise we're all human and sometimes we have bad days).
Repeated and deliberate breachings of the code of conduct following this first reminder will be referred on to the team of core committers and may result in the member being asked to leave the community channels.
While we have a policy of not removing postings and comments from our digital channels, there may be times in which items are removed if deemed blatantly discriminatory towards individuals, groups or cultures.
If a member behaves inappropriately, politely bring this to their attention and gently remind them of the code of conduct when necessary.
Refer to this helpful guide on conflict resolution to aid you when dealing with a conflict.

A living document

This is a living document. As core committers, we know we don't have all the answers so we want to make the community an innovative and valuable space for everyone that wishes to contribute.
If you would like to improve the wording, add additional items, or simply fix typos, each contribution to the code of conduct will be considered on it's merit and agreed upon unanimously by the core committers. Any changes will be included in future revisions of the Silverstripe CMS code of conduct.