Guidelines for respectful communication

[Simon Peyton Jones]

Friends
As many of you will know, I have been concerned for several years about the standards of discourse in the Haskell community.  I think things have improved since the period that drove me to write my Respect email<https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2016-September/024995.html>, but it's far from secure.
We discussed this at a meeting of the GHC Steering Committee<https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals> at ICFP in September, and many of us have had related discussions since.  Arising out of that conversation, the GHC Steering Committee has decided to adopt these
              Guidelines for respectful communication<https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/GRC.rst>

We are not trying to impose these guidelines on members of the Haskell community generally. Rather, we are adopting them for ourselves, as a signal that we seek high standards of discourse in the Haskell community, and are willing to publicly hold ourselves to that standard, in the hope that others may choose to follow suit.
We are calling them "guidelines for respectful communication" rather than a "code of conduct", because we want to encourage good communication, rather than focus on bad behaviour.  Richard Stallman's recent post<https://lwn.net/Articles/769167/> about the new GNU Kind Communication Guidelines<https://gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.html> expresses the same idea.
Meanwhile, the Stack community is taking a similar approach<https://www.snoyman.com/blog/2018/11/proposal-stack-coc>.
Our guidelines are not set in stone; you can comment here<https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/commit/373044b5a78519071b9a24b3681cfd1af06e57e0>.   Perhaps they can evolve so that other Haskell committees (or even individuals) feel able to adopt them.
The Haskell community is such a rich collection of intelligent, passionate, and committed people. Thank you -- I love you all!
Simon



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