Adding a Code of Conduct to Pepper&Carrot
Over the years, the community around Pepper&Carrot has grown a lot. It has grown so much that nowadays the project has 44 members on Framagit (our main tool to manage the translations, renderfarm, website and also many other P&C projects) and our discussion channel on IRC (bridged with channels on Telegram, Riot/Matrix and Framateam) is followed by dozens of contributors from all around the world. This virtual place for Pepper&Carrot's contributors rarely sleeps and there is always someone awake around the globe to chat on it, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If I look back at the time when I started the project...this is just unbelievable and great! Thank you all for your presence...
But in the last months, we started to notice situations between contributors. What would we do when someone starts using bad words repeatedly? Some members of Pepper&Carrot's audience are quite young. Who would we contact in case of an act of racism or sexism? How to manage if we would have someone coming to our cool place with bad feelings? How to proceed to moderate this type of situation?
In order to answer these questions, two months ago we decided to start the quest to adopt a Code of Conduct. Craig Maloney (who leads the Pepper&Carrot Wiki, proofreads the English webcomics and helps at script doctoring) took this task upon him and invited the community to interact with his proposal of a CoC on Framagit. The thread, of course, quickly became a long debate and you can still read the archived comments of our internally famous issue 21 on Framagit.
But after weeks and probably hundreds of comments, the thread reached consensus and Craig finally pushed our CoC online yesterday. He made it into a very creative work and I advice you all to read it, I'm quoting here one of my favorite paragraphs:
"Hereva brings together a myriad of diverse creatures and cultures. Dragon Cows fly overhead, while fierce Phandas lurk in the forests. Spider Admins create a literal web of connectivity, and uplifted ants build rockets to explore their environment. We welcome this diversity in our own community, and bring our own unique backgrounds and preferences to help build this world. We recognize that we are all unique and we respect and celebrate that uniqueness in each of us without diminishing the uniqueness of others. We are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all." You can read the full version of our Code of Conduct in the documentation section of the website. Again, thanks a lot to Craig for writing this text and for the great management during the discussion phase. I'd also like to thank all the contributors who gave feedback on this text. It was mentally exhausting but we still managed to keep discussing with, as Craig put it, exemplary kindness.
Craig Maloney, Midgard, Valvin, and I are now the four moderators of the Pepper&Carrot project and you can check our profile and contact us on the moderator page. I've always seen unique kindness, peace, and a good mood in the P&C community since the beginning. Let's hope the CoC will help us protect it for years to come!
David.
