R Contributors Slack

The R Contributors Slack is a supportive space to foster the community of contributors to R core development:

• Potential/novice contributors wanting support to get started/develop as contributors.
• Experienced contributors and members of R Core willing to provide ad-hoc support.
• Community organizers wanting to connect their communities with this initiative.

By “R core” we refer to the base packages, which R users outside of the R Core Team may contribute to through discussion of bugs/new features, reviewing bug reports and proposing patches. The Slack is a space to discuss related coding issues, the wider development process and outreach initiatives.

For questions that are off-topic, e.g. general Q&A about using R or R packages, installation issues, or package development, please post on an alternative forum for help.

Posting Guide

To create a welcoming and supportive workspace, we ask members to:

• Be welcoming, friendly and patient.
• Avoid sarcasm or belittling language.
• Respect people’s technology choices.
• Provide direct links vs “RTFM”/”Just Google it” responses.
• Use gender inclusive language (see e.g. this factsheet on gender inclusive language). In particular,
  • use “they” when talking about a hypothetical person
  • avoid using “guys”
  • avoid using terms such as “manpower”

The administrators will remind people of the posting guide if necessary and reserve the right to deactivate the membership of anyone persistently acting against the ethos of the workspace.

Messages on public channels of the Slack may be put in a public archive or shared outside the Slack. Use DMs/private channels for private messages, which should not be shared without consent.

By joining the Slack, members also agree to the general code of conduct below. The administrators will enforce this code of conduct and expect cooperation in ensuring a safe environment for all.

[Join/Go to R Contributors Slack]

Code of Conduct

The administrators of R Contributors Slack are dedicated to providing a harassment-free workspace for everyone regardless of age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, race, or religion (or lack thereof).

Expected Behaviour

All members agree to:

• Be considerate in language and actions, and respect the boundaries of fellow members.
• Refrain from demeaning, discriminatory, or harassing behaviour and language. Please refer to Unacceptable Behaviour for more details.
• Alert one of the administrators if you observe violations of this code of conduct, even if they seem inconsequential.

Unacceptable Behaviour

Behaviour that is unacceptable includes, but is not limited to:

• Stalking, e.g. persistent unwanted DMs, logging online activity for harassment purposes.
• Deliberate intimidation.
• Sustained or willful disruption of discussion.
• Use of sexual or discriminatory imagery, comments, or jokes.
• Offensive comments related to age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, race or religion.
• Inappropriate simulated physical contact, e.g. textual descriptions like “hug” or “backrub” or custom emoji representing such contact, used without consent.
• Unwelcome sexual attention, which can include inappropriate questions of a sexual nature, asking for sexual favours or repeatedly asking for dates or contact information.

If you are asked to stop harassing behaviour you should stop immediately, even if your behaviour was meant to be friendly or a joke, it was clearly not taken that way and for the comfort of all members you should stop.

Members who behave in a manner deemed inappropriate are subject to actions listed under Procedure for Code of Conduct Violations.

Procedure for Code of Conduct Violations

The administrators reserves the right to determine the appropriate response for all code of conduct violations. Potential responses include:

• a formal warning to stop harassing behaviour
• temporarily/permanently deactivating membership of the workspace

What To Do If You Witness or Are Subject To Unacceptable Behaviour

Take screenshots of offending posts (deleted posts cannot be seen even by admins).

View the Admins & Owners in the workspace settings (only available to members). Email or message one or more administrators listed to report the behaviour.

If the admins are unable to respond in a timely manner, you may flag the issue by responding to the offending post with a brief comment, e.g.

• This comment is inappropriate, please delete it.
• This goes against the code of conduct, I have reported it.

There is no obligation to respond if you don’t feel comfortable. Don’t get drawn into an argument or pile on an offender, a brief comment is enough to signal the issue and give the offender a chance to make it right.

Acknowledgements

The CoC is adapted from the useR! Code of Conduct.

Parts of the above text are licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Credit to SRCCON. This code of conduct was based on that developed for useR! 2018 which was a revision of the code of conduct used at previous useR!s and also drew from rOpenSci’s code of conduct.