# Behaving Responsibly in the Chef Community

**URL:** <https://discourse.chef.io/t/behaving-responsibly-in-the-chef-community/5680>\
**Category:** Chef Infra (archive)\
**Created:** [August 28, 2014, 6:18am UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/behaving-responsibly-in-the-chef-community/5680 "2014-08-28T06:18:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Nathen\_Harvey2](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/nathen_harvey2/32/179_2.png) [@Nathen\_Harvey2](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Nathen_Harvey2)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2014, 6:18am UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/behaving-responsibly-in-the-chef-community/5680/1 "2014-08-28T06:18:12Z")

</div>

The actions of an individual can have meaningful and lasting impact on our  
community.

I have been reflecting on how we treat each other and captured some of my  
thoughts in a post that I published to our blog tonight. Please read this  
email and the blog post [http://www.getchef.com/blog/?p=12380](http://www.getchef.com/blog/?p=12380).

Our community is a collection of individuals that share a fellowship with  
one another. It is a community built on generosity, professionalism,  
friendship, and hugs.

But we aren’t perfect. Each of us is human and prone to mistakes and  
missteps. When this happens, we must take the time and energy to learn  
from these mistakes and do what we can to prevent them in the future.

It can be easy to quickly transform emotions into a 140 character message  
or even a longer form comment or email. Please remember that there are  
human beings on the other side of those @'s, reading those comments, and  
receiving those emails. Is this something that you would say to that  
person if you were standing in front of him or her?

Today one of our most prolific community members announced his decision to  
leave Chef and go on a software engineering sabbatical, in part because of  
how he was treated by a few members in our community. As a company, Chef  
takes the safety and security of our employees extremely seriously.  
Further, it is our heartfelt desire to have a community where diverse  
opinion is welcome and where members feel safe and secure to engage in  
healthy, and sometimes spirited, dialog with the mutual goal of creating  
value and growing as professionals and human beings. As a community, we  
need to use this event as a moment to reflect on how we treat each other.

We have just written a post on the Chef blog (  
[http://www.getchef.com/blog/?p=12380](http://www.getchef.com/blog/?p=12380)) that discusses this subject a bit  
more. I invite you to read that post and comment via whichever forum you  
think is most appropriate.

Thank you for participating in these conversations. Here are some immediate  
actions you can take to help us improve the community.

- Behave responsibly and help us address unacceptable behavior when it  
occurs.
- Participate in the RFC to rewrite our community guidelines.
- Join us at the next Chef Developers’ IRC Meeting to discuss the RFC.
- Join us at one of our upcoming Chef Community Summit events to discuss  
this topic in person with other community members.

Together we will make our community stronger.

Thank you,  
Nathen  
@nathenharvey  
+1 202.368.7264

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Bryan\_McLellan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/bryan_mclellan/32/81_2.png) [@Bryan\_McLellan](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Bryan_McLellan)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2014, 5:24pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/behaving-responsibly-in-the-chef-community/5680/2 "2014-08-28T17:24:48Z")

</div>

On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 2:18 AM, Nathen Harvey [nharvey@getchef.com](mailto:nharvey@getchef.com) wrote:

> - Participate in the RFC to rewrite our community guidelines.

We're starting this discussion over here:

> <https://github.com/chef-boneyard/chef-rfc/pull/47>
>
> This is an initial draft. It's not complete but is far enough along that it's r…eady for more eyes and comments.

Bryan

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Bryan\_McLellan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/bryan_mclellan/32/81_2.png) [@Bryan\_McLellan](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Bryan_McLellan)\
**Post date:** [August 29, 2014, 4:46pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/behaving-responsibly-in-the-chef-community/5680/3 "2014-08-29T16:46:33Z")

</div>

On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 1:24 PM, Bryan McLellan [btm@loftninjas.org](mailto:btm@loftninjas.org) wrote:

> On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 2:18 AM, Nathen Harvey [nharvey@getchef.com](mailto:nharvey@getchef.com)  
> wrote:
> 
> > - Participate in the RFC to rewrite our community guidelines.
> 
> We're starting this discussion over here:  
> [https://github.com/opscode/chef-rfc/pull/47](https://github.com/opscode/chef-rfc/pull/47)

It'd be really helpful to have some conversation about how specific of a  
justice system we want to build initially for our community.

What kind of punitive actions people would want/expect to happen for  
various offensives? IRC bans? Community Site bans? ChefConf / Summit bans?

How public should the process be? Should we have Chef Software Community  
Managers just work it out? Do we want to elect Community Advocates? Do they  
need to vote/agree?

I'd expect this to tie into the larger project structure proposal that Adam  
Jacob is preparing to share with the community too.

Bryan