EEP-00: Governance model & code of conduct#
Author |
Maximilian Blesch, Janoś Gabler, Hans-Martin von Gaudecker, Annica Gehlen, Sebastian Gsell, Tim Mensinger <https://github.com/timmens>_, `Mariam Petrosyan, Tobias Raabe, Klara Röhrl |
Status |
Accepted |
Type |
Standards Track |
Created |
2022-04-28 |
Resolution |
Purpose#
This document formalizes the estimagic code of conduct and governance model. In case of changes, this document can be updated following the estimagic Enhancement Proposal process detailed below.
Code of Conduct#
Our Pledge#
We as members, contributors, and leaders pledge to make participation in our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.
We pledge to act and interact in ways that contribute to an open, welcoming, diverse, inclusive, and healthy community.
Our Standards#
Examples of behavior that contributes to a positive environment for our community include:
Demonstrating empathy and kindness toward other people
Being respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences
Giving and gracefully accepting constructive feedback
Accepting responsibility and apologizing to those affected by our mistakes, and learning from the experience
Focusing on what is best not just for us as individuals, but for the overall community
Examples of unacceptable behavior include:
The use of sexualized language or imagery, and sexual attention or advances of any kind
Trolling, insulting or derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks
Public or private harassment
Publishing others’ private information, such as a physical or email address, without their explicit permission
Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting
Enforcement Responsibilities#
Community leaders are responsible for clarifying and enforcing our standards of acceptable behavior and will take appropriate and fair corrective action in response to any behavior that they deem inappropriate, threatening, offensive, or harmful.
Community leaders have the right and responsibility to remove, edit, or reject comments, commits, code, wiki edits, issues, and other contributions that are not aligned to this Code of Conduct, and will communicate reasons for moderation decisions when appropriate.
Scope#
This Code of Conduct applies within all community spaces, on all formal and informal events, and also applies when an individual is officially representing the community in public spaces. Examples of representing our community include
using an official e-mail address
posting via an official social media account
acting as a representative at an online or offline event
acting as a representative surrounding an event
Enforcement#
Instances of abusive, harassing, or otherwise unacceptable behavior may be reported to the community leaders responsible for enforcement. You can contact either Mariam Petrosyan (mariam.a.petrosyan@gmail.com) or Tim Mensinger (tmensinger@uni-bonn.de). All complaints will be reviewed and investigated promptly and fairly.
All community leaders are obligated to respect the privacy and security of the reporter of any incident.
Enforcement Guidelines#
Community leaders will follow these Community Impact Guidelines in determining the consequences for any action they deem in violation of this Code of Conduct:
1. Correction#
Community Impact: Use of inappropriate language or other behavior deemed unprofessional or unwelcome in the community.
Consequence: A private, written warning from community leaders, 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#
Community Impact: A violation through a single incident or series of actions.
Consequence: A warning with consequences for continued behavior. 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: A serious violation of community standards, including sustained inappropriate behavior.
Consequence: A temporary ban from any sort of interaction or public communication with the community for a specified period of time. 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: Demonstrating a pattern of violation of community standards, including sustained inappropriate behavior, harassment of an individual, or aggression toward or disparagement of classes of individuals.
Consequence: A permanent ban from any sort of public interaction within the community.
Attribution#
This Code of Conduct is adapted from the Contributor Covenant, version 2.0, available at https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/2/0/code_of_conduct.html.
Community Impact Guidelines were inspired by Mozilla’s code of conduct enforcement ladder.
For answers to common questions about this code of conduct, see the FAQ at https://www.contributor-covenant.org/faq. Translations are available at https://www.contributor-covenant.org/translations.
estimagic governance model#
Summary#
The governance model strives to be lightweight and based on consensus of all interested parties. Most work happens in GitHub issues and pull requests (regular decision process). Any interested party can voice their concerns or veto on proposed changes. If this happens, the estimagic Enhancement Proposal (EEP) process can be used to iterate over proposals until consesus is reached (controversial decision process). If necessary, members of the steering council can moderate heated debates and help to broker a consensus.
Regular decision process#
Most changes to estimagic are additions of new functionality or strict improvements of existing functionality. Such changes can be discussed in GitHub issues and discussions and implemented in pull requests. They do not require an estimagic Enhancement Proposal.
Before starting to work on estimagic, contributors should read how to contribute and the styleguide. They can also reach out to existing contributors if any help is needed or anything remains unclear. We are all happy to help onboarding new contributors in any way necessary. For example, we have given introductions to git and GitHub in the past to help people make a contribution to estimagic.
Pull requests should be opened as soon as work is started. They should contain a good description of the planned work such that any interested party can participate in the discussion around the changes. If planned changes turn out to be controversial, their design should be discussed in an estimagic Enhancement Proposal before the actual work starts. When the work is finished, the author of a pull request can request a review. In most cases, previous discussions will show who is a suitable reviewer. If in doubt, tag janosg. Pull requests can be merged if there is at least one approving review.
Reviewers should be polite, welcoming and helpful to the author of the pull request who might have spent many hours working on the changes. Authors of pull requests should keep in mind that reviewers’ time is valuable. Major points should be discussed publicly on GitHub, but very critical feedback or small details can be moved to private discussions — if the latter are necessary at all (see the bottom section of this blog post for an excellent discussion of the burden that review comments place on maintainers, which might not always be obvious). Video calls can help if a discussion gets stuck. The code of conduct applies to all interactions related to code reviews.
estimagic Enhancement Proposals (EEPs) / Controversial decision process#
Large changes to estimagic can be proposed in estimagic Enhancement Proposals, short EEPs. They serve the purpose of summarising discussions that may happen in chats, issues, pull requests, in person, or by any other means. Simple extensions (like adding new optimizers) do not need to be discussed with such a formal process.
EEPs are written as markdown documents that become part of the documentation. Opening an EEP means opening a pull request that adds the markdown document to the documentation. It is not necessary to already have a working implementations for the planned changes, even though it might be a good idea to have rough prototypes for solutions to the most challenging parts.
If the author of an EEP feels that it is ready to be accepted they need to make a post in the relevant Zulip topic and a comment on the PR that contains the following information:
Summary of all contentious aspects of the EEP and how they have been resolved
Every interested party has seven days to comment on the PR proposing the EEP, either with approval or objections. While only objections are relevant for the decision making process, approvals are a good way to signal interest in the planned change and recognize the work of the authors.
If there are no unresolved objections after seven days, the EEP will automatically be accepted and can be merged.
Note that the pull requests that actually implement the proposed enhancements still require a standard review cycle.
Steering Council#
The estimagic Steering Council consists of five people who take responsibility for the future development of estimagic and the estimagic community. Being a member of the steering council comes with no special rights. The main roles of the steering council are:
Facilitate the growth of estimagic and the estimagic community by organizing community events, identifying funding opportunities and improving the experience of all community members.
Develop a roadmap, break down large changes into smaller projects and find contributors to work on the implementation of these projects.
Ensure that new contributors are onboarded and assisted and that pull requests are reviewed in a timely fashion.
Step in as moderators when discussions get heated, help to achieve consensus on controversial topics and enforce the code of conduct.
The Steering Council is elected by the estimagic community during a community meeting.
Candidates need to be active community members and can be nominated by other community members or themselves until the start of the election. Nominated candidates need to accept the nomination before the start of the election.
If there are only five candidates, the Steering Council is elected by acclamation. Else, every participant casts five votes. The 5 candidates with the most votes become elected. Candidates can vote for themselves. Ties are resolved by a second round of voting where each participant casts as many votes as there are positions left. Remaining ties are resolved by randomization.
Current memebers of the estimagic Steering Council are:
Community meeting#
Community meetings can be held to elect a steering council, make changes to the governance model or code of conduct, or to make other decisions that affect the community as a whole. Moreover, they serve to keep the community updated about the development of estimagic and get feedback.
Community meetings need to be announced via our public channels (e.g. the zulip workspace or GitHub discussions) with sufficient time until the meeting. The definition of sufficient time will increase with the size of the community.