Template · 1 page, interactive builder

Contributor Covenant: A Code of Conduct for Digital Communities

Organization for Ethical Source · Contributor Covenant Free Beginner

This is a short, plain-language code of conduct adopted by thousands of communities (including nine of the ten largest open source projects), and its interactive builder lets you fill in your own values, reporting contact, and enforcement steps in a few minutes. It reads like a shared understanding between people, not a legal document, so it is a clean starting point you can trim rather than a corporate policy you have to soften. Treat the generated text as a first draft in your own voice, not a verdict.

  • A ready, human-sounding baseline you can customize instead of writing rules from a blank page.
  • The builder forces the two things people forget: who to contact and what actually happens when a line is crossed.
  • It is a starting draft to edit down to your community's tone, not a document to paste in whole.
Open on contributor-covenant.org ↗

The question it answers

  1. How do I moderate my community and set ground rules without making it feel corporate and stiff?

Read with it

  1. FeverBee is the most credible voice on running online communities, and this piece makes the honest case that written guidelines... FeverBee Article · 8 to 10 min read Community Guidelines Richard Millington (FeverBee)
  2. Shirky's classic essay is the deepest argument for why a community's real norms come from how the group behaves and how the... shirky.com Essay · 25 to 30 min read A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy Clay Shirky
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