Code of Conduct

HPX Contributor Agreement and Code of Conduct

  1. Introduction and Scope 

Introduction: The HPX community is made up of professionals, students, and volunteers from all over the world, working on every aspect of the mission – including mentoring, educating, and connecting people.

Diversity is one of our core strengths.  We proactively maintain a community of contributors where individuals feel welcomed, supported, recognized for their contributions and safe to participate and engage constructively.  To ensure that we have an open and well-functioning community, we have a few ground rules (“Community Standards”) that all contributors must honor.

As with all communities, communication issues will arise.  There will be good faith disagreements about how to proceed or resolve certain issues.  The Code of Conduct (CoC) is designed to help contributors respond constructively when such issues arise.  Unfortunately, contributors may behave in ways that cannot be described as good-faith or acceptable.  Such behavior involves harm to individual contributors and to the community and will not be tolerated.

Scope:  Our contributor CoC applies equally to all contributors to our community, including founders, mentors, students, and those seeking help and guidance. This code of conduct applies to all spaces, physical and electronic, managed by HPX. This includes meeting rooms, meetups, offices, IRC, the mailing lists, the issue tracker, any other forums created by the project team, which the community uses for communication, and – certainly – direct personal communications. This code may also apply to external venues that the team does not directly control as conversations held there may affect a person’s ability to participate within our team.

We require all HPX-sponsored and -affiliated projects to adopt a code of conduct for their project that encourages a productive, respectful environment for all open-source contributors and community members.

This code is not exhaustive or complete. It aims to capture our understanding of what it means to support and maintain a collaborative, inclusive community. Please honor this code in spirit as much as you adhere to its letter.

  1. Community Standards

Be inclusive and welcoming. We are a community that welcomes and supports people of all backgrounds and identities, and physical abilities. We strive to make our community all-inclusive, and also recognize that there are specific identities that are impacted by systemic discrimination and marginalization.

Be friendly and patient. Remember that we are a worldwide community, so you might not be communicating in someone else’s primary language. 

Be respectful. Not all of us will agree all the time, but disagreement is no excuse for poor behavior and poor manners. We might all experience some frustration now and then, but we cannot allow that frustration to turn into a personal attack. It is important to remember that a community where people feel uncomfortable or threatened is not a productive one. Members of the HPX community should be respectful when dealing with other members as well as with people outside the broader community.  

Be considerate. Other people will use your work, and you in turn will depend on the work of others. Any decision you make will affect users and colleagues, and you should consider those consequences when making decisions. 

Give credit when credit is due. We expect everybody to adhere to and promote the principles of academic integrity, accountability, independence/impartiality, and professionalism in their research engagements. In this spirit, we especially value the proper acknowledgement of the accomplishments of other people. We will not tolerate plagiarism or copyright infringement.

When we disagree, try to understand why. Disagreements, both social and technical, happen all the time and in the HPX Group this is no exception. It is important that we resolve disagreements and differing views constructively. Remember that we are different. The strength of our community comes from its diversity, with many people from a wide range of backgrounds. Different people have different perspectives on issues. Being unable to understand why someone holds a viewpoint does not mean that those viewpoints are wrong. Do not forget that it is human to err and blaming each other does not get us anywhere. Instead, focus on helping to resolve issues and learning from mistakes.

Be careful in the words that you choose. We are a community of professionals, and we conduct ourselves professionally. Be kind to others. Do not insult or put down other participants. Harassment and other exclusionary behavior are not acceptable and will be dealt with according to the procedure outlined in the ‘Community Standards Enforcement and Reporting Guidelines’ section, below. 

Unacceptable behaviors include, but are not limited to:

  • Violent threats or language directed against another person.
  • Discriminatory jokes and language
  • Unwelcome sexual attention.
  • Posting sexually explicit or violent material.
  • Sharing private content, such as emails sent privately or non-publicly, or direct message history, without the sender’s consent.
  • Sustained disruption of talks, events, or communications, such as heckling a speaker.
  • Posting (or threatening to post) other people’s personally identifying information (“doxing”).
  • Personal insults, especially those using racist or sexist terms.
  • Continuing to initiate interaction (such as photography, recording, messaging, or conversation) with someone after being asked to stop. In general, if someone asks you to stop, then stop.
  • Advocating for, or encouraging, any of the above behavior.

III. Community Standards Enforcement and Reporting Guidelines 

A.    Enforcement Guidelines:

The Community Standards Enforcement (CSE) team (Hartmut Kaiser, Chair and Debbie Goldgaber, Director of Ethics)  is responsible for clarifying and enforcing standards of acceptable community behavior and will take appropriate and fair corrective action (following the “impact ladder” guidelines below) in response to observed or reported behavior that violates community standards or is otherwise deemed threatening or harmful.

The CSE team will have the right and responsibility to remove, edit, or reject comments, commits, code, wiki edits, issues, and other contributions that are not aligned with our Code of Conduct, and will communicate reasons for moderation decisions when appropriate.

Enforcement Impact Ladder

CSE team will follow an “impact ladder” in determining the consequences for any behavior deemed to be in violation of the Code of Conduct:

1. Correction

Impact: Low (e.g. Unprofessional language)

Consequence: A private, written notice from CSE team, providing clarity around the nature of the violation and an explanation of why the behavior was inappropriate. A public apology may be requested.

2. Warning

Impact: Moderate (e.g. Repeated misconduct after correction)

Consequence: A warning from CSE team with consequences for continued behavior. Warning involves the following terms: no interaction with the people involved, including unsolicited interaction with those enforcing the Code of Conduct, for a specified period of time. This includes avoiding interactions in community spaces as well as external channels like social media. Violating these terms may lead to a temporary or permanent ban.

3. Temporary Ban

Community Impact: Serious (e.g. sustained inappropriate behavior violating community standards).

Consequence: A temporary ban from any sort of interaction with the community for a specified period of time. A temporary ban involves the following terms: No public or private interaction with the people involved, including unsolicited interaction with those enforcing the Code of Conduct, is allowed during this period. Violating these terms may lead to a permanent ban.

4. Permanent Ban

Community Impact: Most Serious (e.g. demonstrating a pattern of misconduct, including sustained inappropriate behavior, harassment of an individual, or aggression toward or disparagement of classes of individuals).

Consequence: A permanent ban from any interaction within the community.

B.  Reporting guidelines:

For minor, first-time or possibly unintentional breaches of the code of conduct, individual contributors may prefer to respond to the person and share the Contributor Agreement and Code of Conduct (either in public or in private, whatever is deemed most appropriate). 

In all other cases, please submit a report by email to the CSE team at conduct@stellar-group.org. Include name, contact info, date of incident, name(s) of individual(s) involved, and any supporting files.  Please report incidents in a timely manner.  All reports will be kept confidential.

All complaints will be reviewed and investigated and will result in a response calibrated to the impact circumstances within 5 business days (see impact ladder above). 

How to Submit a Report:

REPORTING FORM: Link (form should include: name, contact info, date of incident, description of incident, name(s) of individuals involved, supporting files

Reports are sent to the HPX Code of Conduct Enforcement Team (email).

Attributions

This Code of Conduct is adapted from the Contributor Covenant, version 2.1, available at https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/2/1/code_of_conduct.html.

Community Impact Guidelines were inspired by Mozilla’s code of conduct enforcement ladder.