Standards for Codes-of-Conduct documents

[danielfromearth]

Issue:

It is not currently clear what is an appropriate Code of Conduct document for a codebase on NASA's GitHub organization. Can a standard — or at least, guidance on a — Code of Conduct document for repositories in NASA's GitHub be established? I believe it could be beneficial to streamline this for repository contributors, and it would be helpful for other folks visiting and interacting with repositories on NASA's GitHub.

Context:

Preparing code repositories (including on NASA's GitHub org.) to follow Open Science guidelines typically includes adding a Code of Conduct — as a file named CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md. In general, Codes of Conduct set expectations for how people interact with the project and with each other, and they are expected to be present for certain applications. For example, pyOpenSci explicitly asks for a CODE-of-CONDUCT.md to be included in a submitted repository.

[danielfromearth]

Noting here that Codes of Conduct are also mentioned in this more general issue #20 about software guidance as well, which links to a guidance document provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

[stefaniebutland]

Here's rOpenSci's guidance for people developing an R package: https://devguide.ropensci.org/collaboration.html#contributing-guide. They've thought a lot about this issue.

In the software peer review process, there's automated check for .github/CONTRIBUTING.md in which authors should refer and link to rOpenSci's Code of Conduct.

Example package review thread, try ctrl-f 'contributing'

[RPaseka]

Thank you @danielfromearth & @stefaniebutland - these are all helpful resources.

Examples to include from GESDISC & JWST

[PaulMRamirez]

I'd recommend there be some guidance here from NASA to adopt some version of Contributor Covenant (e.g v2.1) given its widely adopted and well known. One would want to review https://www.contributor-covenant.org/ before adopting this. The rationale here is not to invent our own. This approach would also allow the community to adopt the badge structure to indicate on the README an easily digested understanding of what the Code of Conduct is. This would also include guidance the procedure to fill in the CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md. This procedure is documented openly https://nasa-ammos.github.io/slim/docs/guides/governance/contributions/code-of-conduct/.