rOpenSci

Stefanie Butland

Our [Community Call](/blog/2016/10/31/comm-call-v12) on December 15th
covered a big topic in tech communities: "How do I create a code of
conduct for my event/lab/codebase?". Here, we cover some of the key
themes and considerations that arose from the discussion and point to
curated resources and examples to follow when developing a code of
conduct (CoC) for your community.

Three guest speakers shared different perspectives. Dr Pauline Barmby
talked about the process and lessons learned as [Data
Carpentry](https://www.datacarpentry.org/) and [Software
Carpentry](https://software-carpentry.org/) recently updated their CoC;
Ms Safia Abdalla talked about "Codes of conduct for open source: the
stuff no one tells you"; and Dr Titus Brown talked about his lab CoC.
You can [read their bios](#speaker-bios) below and watch the
[video](https://vimeo.com/196503807) of the call. Speakers did not use
other presentation materials.

From the talks and discussion it became clear that there are three key
components to codes of conduct:

- drafting
- adopting and sharing
- reporting and enforcing

### Drafting a Code of Conduct

Once a group of interested people digs into the work of drafting a CoC,
the process can seem like it's going on forever, especially if you try
to incorporate "everyone's" feedback. The CoC cannot be a living
document. It's most important to produce something good and perhaps
revisit it each year. There seemed to be a consensus that a small
committee of key stakeholders should draft the CoC. For his own lab,
Titus drafted and posted it without fanfare, but has already seen
[unanticipated
benefits](http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/2016-notes-on-lab-coc.html).

Some notes:

- Develop and post a CoC whether or not you know of any problems;
  setting clear expectations is 90% of the work.
- The CoC has to set expectations for everyone, including the boss (if
  there is one).
- One big issue for the Carpentries was whether or not there should be
  specific lists of prohibited behaviors or protected groups.
- Because many of our communities cross international boundaries, our
  CoCs should be accessible in multiple languages. The [Contributor
  Covenant](https://contributor-covenant.org/) does provide a template
  CoC in [multiple languages](https://contributor-covenant.org/i18n/).
- For international communities, what is enforceable or criminal depends
  on where you are. For example, Canadian laws against hate-speech are
  not necessarily enforceable in other countries.

### Adopting and Sharing a Code of Conduct

With big online communities, you rely on buy-in of lots from people to
publicize and enforce your CoC and set the tone for your community. When
a small group has developed the CoC, it's important to have your leaders
and key contributors be open and vocal about their top-down endorsement.
In this way, community members without power in the organization can see
they will be supported. Overtly showing kindness and pointing to the CoC
tends to filter out people who don't want to be subject to its
enforcement.

### Reporting Violations, Consequences and Enforcing a Code of Conduct

In addition to listing specific common behaviors that are not okay, a
code of conduct must include directions for reporting violations and
have a clear process for handling complaints. In the [words of the Ada
Initiative](https://adainitiative.org/2014/02/18/howto-design-a-code-of-conduct-for-your-community/),

> *Without these elements, a code of conduct isn't worth the electrons
> used to display it on your computer screen.*

Some notes:

- Reporting of a violation through a standardized form can enable
  someone to convey the issue and help them think through it during what
  might be an emotional experience. A standardized form also enables the
  enforcers to get the information they need to make a good judgement on
  the report.
- Anonymous reporting of a violation should be an option.
- Progression of consequences can move from a verbal warning, to a
  time-based ban, to a permanent ban, all the way to legal action with
  real-world authorities.

In the realm of CoCs, enforcement is the hard part, and the part that is
most often overlooked until a crisis forces the issue. Enforcement
should be handled by a board of three to five people and have
representation of different perspectives. For an event, that board could
include the event organizer, a community member, and someone who was
involved in developing the CoC. The people involved in enforcement must
have empathy for the issue being reported so it's important to involve
people who don't necessarily have power within the community or
organization. Someone suggested that an enforcement board might be wise
to include someone from outside their own community.

In an academic research environment, there is a huge grey area between
dealing with a violation within a lab and getting the university
involved. This grey area can be filled by identifying a person outside
the lab AND outside the university to participate when needed. This
third party can be the first point of contact for complaints about the
principal investigator, for example. A lot can be resolved before
escalating to involvement of the university, its lawyers, or unions. (Of
course there are cases where this is warranted.)

One tricky area of enforcement is around online conversations in
discussion forums or in GitHub issues where people sometimes say things
they shouldn't. Safia made the excellent point that it helps to leave a
comment on the issue because it will remain visible online. Saying
something like "we're willing to help, but we don't tolerate this kind
of communication" means newcomers can see that bad behavior is addressed
and not tolerated. This is also critical to maintain or rebuild trust
from community members. If you're a GitHub admin you could choose to
implement a time-based ban as a consequence. In this situation,
recognition of a violation is easy, but there is a big enforcement
challenge when that person is a significant contributor. This is where
it is critical to have a strong enforcement board and a good structure
for raising a violation through the ranks depending on its severity.

### We Have Work To Do

rOpenSci currently has CoCs for [our
events](https://unconf16.ropensci.org/coc.html), for [software
onboarding](https://devguide.ropensci.org/policies.html#code-of-conduct),
and for many of our [individual
packages](https://github.com/ropensci/taxize/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md)
(working on having this for all our packages!). We'll take what we
learned in this Community Call to develop a more comprehensive CoC, make
sure it's easily findable and that consequences of violations are
enforceable. [Let us know](/contact/) if you'd like to get involved.

### Resources

- [Video](https://vimeo.com/196503807) of our Dec 15, 2016 Community
  Call

- C. Titus Brown's [Laboratory Code of
  Conduct](http://ivory.idyll.org/lab/coc.html) and [notes on developing
  it](http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/2016-notes-on-lab-coc.html), including
  why he did it and what use it's been.

- Data/Software Carpentry's new [code of
  conduct](https://www.datacarpentry.org/code-of-conduct/), [reporting
  guidelines](https://www.datacarpentry.org/CoC-reporting/) and
  [enforcement policy](https://www.datacarpentry.org/CoC-enforcement/).

- The Ada Initiative's [How to design a code of conduct for your
  community](https://adainitiative.org/2014/02/18/howto-design-a-code-of-conduct-for-your-community/)

- [Contributor Covenant](https://contributor-covenant.org/). A Code of
  Conduct for Open Source Projects (in multiple languages)

- A template [code of
  conduct](https://github.com/confcodeofconduct/confcodeofconduct.com),
  in multiple languages

### Speaker bios

[**Pauline Barmby**](https://nearby-galaxies.github.io/people/) is an
Associate Professor in Physics and Astronomy and Associate Dean of
Graduate and Post Doctoral Studies at Western University. Her research
focuses on nearby galaxies and [her blog](https://pbarmby.github.io/)
contains musings about astrophysics, science teaching, computing, and
perhaps knitting, curling, and science fiction. Pauline is the head of
Data/Software Carpentry's code of conduct committee and will talk about
their experiences in refining their code to ensure it has enforceable
consequences.Pauline on [GitHub](https://github.com/PBarmby)

[**Safia Abdalla**](https://safia.rocks/) is a data scientist and
software engineer with an interest in open source software and data
science for social good. She helps build nteract, a
[NumFOCUS](https://www.numfocus.org/open-source-projects.html) fiscally
sponsored open source project, and organizes PyData Chicago. Safia has
written about codes of conduct in [How To Create A Welcoming and
Inclusive Open Source
Space](https://blog.safia.rocks/post/141972488250/how-to-create-a-welcoming-and-inclusive-open).Safia
on [GitHub](https://github.com/captainsafia)

[**C. Titus Brown**](http://ivory.idyll.org) is an Associate Professor
at UC Davis, where his [Lab for Data Intensive
Biology](http://ivory.idyll.org/lab/) tackles questions surrounding
biological data analysis, data integration, and data sharing. The lab's
primary interest is in genomic, transcriptomic, and metagenomic sequence
analysis. Titus has developed a [Lab Code of
Conduct](http://ivory.idyll.org/lab/coc.html).He recently wrote about
[What is open
science?](http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/2016-what-is-open-science.html)Titus
on [GitHub](https://github.com/dib-lab)


Our Community Call on December 15th covered a big topic in tech communities: “How do I create a code of conduct for my event/lab/codebase?”. Here, we cover some of the key themes and considerations that arose from the discussion and point to curated resources and examples to follow when developing a code of conduct (CoC) for your community. Three guest speakers shared different perspectives.

Highlights and Resources from Community Call v12: How do I create a code of conduct for my event/lab/codebase?

In order to facilitate a transformation towards open and reproducible
research, rOpenSci is building and improving not only the technical
infrastructure, but the social infrastructure as well. To support this,
occasionally a Community Call will focus on a topic that reflects the
values of rOpenSci. The first of these, on Thursday, December 15th, 8-9
AM PST, will be on "How do I create a code of conduct for my
event/lab/codebase?".

## Agenda

1.  Welcome (5 min, Stefanie Butland)
2.  Pauline Barmby - Data/Software Carpentry's [new code of
    conduct](https://www.datacarpentry.org/code-of-conduct/) (5-10 min)
3.  Safia Abdalla - Codes of conduct for open source: the stuff no one
    tells you (5-10 min)
4.  C. Titus Brown - How we developed our [Lab Code of
    Conduct](http://ivory.idyll.org/lab/coc.html) (5-10 min)
5.  Discussion (15 min, moderated by Karthik Ram)
6.  Solicit ideas for Community Calls (5 min, Stefanie)

[Details](https://ropensci.org/commcalls/2016-12-15//12) for joining the
Community Call

After the call, we'll post the
[video](https://vimeo.com/ropensci/videos) and archive the
[notes](https://ropensci.org/commcalls/2016-12-15/) along with any links
to resources.

## Speaker bios

[**Safia Abdalla**](https://safia.rocks/) is a data scientist and
software engineer with an interest in open source software and data
science for social good. She helps build nteract, a
[NumFOCUS](https://www.numfocus.org/open-source-projects.html) fiscally
sponsored open source project, and organizes PyData Chicago. Safia has
written about codes of conduct in [How To Create A Welcoming and
Inclusive Open Source
Space](https://blog.safia.rocks/post/141972488250/how-to-create-a-welcoming-and-inclusive-open).Safia
on [GitHub](https://github.com/captainsafia)

[**Pauline Barmby**](https://nearby-galaxies.github.io/people/) is an
Associate Professor in Physics and Astronomy and Associate Dean of
Graduate and Post Doctoral Studies at Western University. Her research
focuses on nearby galaxies and [her blog](https://pbarmby.github.io/)
contains musings about astrophysics, science teaching, computing, and
perhaps knitting, curling, and science fiction. Pauline is the head of
Data/Software Carpentry's code of conduct committee and will talk about
their experiences in refining their code to ensure it has enforceable
consequences.Pauline on [GitHub](https://github.com/PBarmby)

[**C. Titus Brown**](http://ivory.idyll.org) is an Associate Professor
at UC Davis, where his [Lab for Data Intensive
Biology](http://ivory.idyll.org/lab/) tackles questions surrounding
biological data analysis, data integration, and data sharing. The lab's
primary interest is in genomic, transcriptomic, and metagenomic sequence
analysis. Titus has developed a [Lab Code of
Conduct](http://ivory.idyll.org/lab/coc.html)He recently wrote about
[What is open
science?](http://ivory.idyll.org/blog/2016-what-is-open-science.html)Titus
on [GitHub](https://github.com/dib-lab)


In order to facilitate a transformation towards open and reproducible research, rOpenSci is building and improving not only the technical infrastructure, but the social infrastructure as well. To support this, occasionally a Community Call will focus on a topic that reflects the values of rOpenSci.

Community Call v12 - How do I create a code of conduct for my event/lab/codebase?

Scott Chamberlain

Key to the success of rOpenSci is our community and we want to hear more
regularly from our members, and foster new interactions among the group.
In addition, community calls are a way for us to give important updates,
and get feedback on them.

We tentatively plan on doing community calls once per month. The format
of rOpenSci community calls could be of various types. We could have
community members show off software they've been working on, or users
demo use cases. Instead, we could focus more on conversations. For this
first call, we'll be doing a combination of demonstration and
discussion. We would like to experiment with the call format over the
next few months before we decide on one or more approaches that work
best.

For our first community call, [Ciera Martinez](http://cierareports.org/)
will join us, who will tell us about the recent [NESCENT reproducible
science hackathon for curriculum and workflow
development](https://github.com/Reproducible-Science-Curriculum/Reproducible-Science-Hackathon-Dec-08-2014)
that she organized ([see also this NESCENT
page](http://www.nescent.org/cal/calendar_detail.php?id=1125), and
[`#rrhack` tweets](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23rrhack&src=typd)).
We'll use screen share so she can not only describe, but show off the
tools they've built.

The 1st meeting agenda:

1.  Recent rOpenSci developments - We'll go over notable developments in
    rOpenSci software and community.
2.  rOpenSci hackathon in San Francisco - We'll be having our 2nd annual
    US hackathon at GitHub HQ.
3.  NESCENT rrhack - Ciera Martinez - Ciera will present highlights from
    the rrhack event.
4.  Q/A session - This will be an open Q/A session, where anyone can ask
    about all things rOpenSci, either on software, community, etc.

Details:

- Date/time: January 14th 2015, 2 pm PST (Find your time at
  <https://everytimezone.com/#2015-1-14,600,cn3>)
- How to join the call: They'll be a number to call, we'll post details
  soon...
- Collaborative notepad: We'll use Etherpad. You can find the Etherpad
  for this call at
  <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nK7Dz2UQrbop2i3Y8cINvpIpNj4taPfOoyN7IBSJ96E/edit>.

After each call, we'll archive the notes, and they'll be publicly
available.


Key to the success of rOpenSci is our community and we want to hear more regularly from our members, and foster new interactions among the group. In addition, community calls are a way for us to give important updates, and get feedback on them. We tentatively plan on doing community calls once per month. The format of rOpenSci community calls could be of various types.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

Highlights and Resources from Community Call v12: How do I create a code of conduct for my event/lab/codebase?

Community Call v12 - How do I create a code of conduct for my event/lab/codebase?

Community calls