Governance, Contribution Policy, and Code of Conduct.

I was about to comment on the new threads about core governance when I realized that all of them presume some knowledge of the structure we've adopted and have been using for some time in Node Forward.

Without discussing and being able to link to some kind of ongoing documentation I don't think the conversation threads will be very fruitful so I've gone ahead and written them up in this pull request.

They are adapted from Node Forward's fork where they are sections in the CONTRIBUTING file. Here I've put them in to their own files for clearer separation. All direct references to Node Forward have been removed so that this can be adopted by any project without confusion.

The premise is simple: the project employs a simple governance structure that can be the "final word" on contentious issues and, most importantly, owns the *contribution policy*. The contribution policy is intended to be somewhat fluid and adapt over time to the needs of the project. The current one is geared heavily towards growing the contributor base of the project because that's the biggest problem. You can imagine that after the project grows a large cohort of contributors this policy would change to adapt the challenges of distributing work among a larger contributor base.

This separation between *contributor* and *TC member* is a necessary one. Liberalizing the contribution policy has been an effective tool at growing new contributors in Node Forward and in other projects that have been employing similar policies for some time. Of course, contributors who spend a fair amount of time in the project and want to take on additional responsibilities will find themselves on the TC but the direct correlation of commit rights to being part of a sometimes boring and bureaucratic process of managing the project at a higher level is an unnecessary barrier to growing contributors.
@Adikia the problem I have with your argument is that you're finding examples where putting the burden of intent on the accused has negative consequences without recognizing or empathizing with the consequences for marginalized people under an inverted system.

The default, the status quo, is that people currently marginalized will stay that way. The intention of policies geared towards changing that will necessarily have some negative consequences for currently privileged groups. It's easy to poke holes in any policy or cultural change because of these negative effects, falling back to the current state of things, but it isn't responsible or, IMO, moral discourse because the existing consequences for marginalized people aren't being weighed against the negative effects for the privileged.

Think about the story you've told. Someone lost a great deal in their life because they offended someone who decided to take the offense to the court of public opinion. That court, at least in this community, leans heavily towards consequences for the privileged.

And so, you are lamenting the current culture which inflicted harsh penalties on to someone who offended someone without intending to. But what is the alternative? The alternative is a culture which demands proof of intent from a marginalized person offended by someone in a position of power. That would be a culture with basically zero consequences for people in power, offenses would never be reported, and marginalized people would have to accept an environment where they are continually offended.

What I'm suggesting is that rather than lament this state of culture, people in privileged positions of power take more responsibility for their actions. Could this person not have said that? Could they have said that if they thought more about what they were saying and how they said it?

Of course, I don't want what happened to your friend to happen to me but the way I'm working to make that happen is to measure my behavior and refrain from saying potentially offensive shit.

You said that you're refraining from mentoring women because you're afraid that you'll offend them. At the same time you're in a progressive enough culture that it has convinced at least some women that it's alright for them to *be* offended. To lament this change is to applaud the days when women accepted a male dominated environment kept any offenses to themselves.

BTW, I didn't say that you were a "straight white male," I said that the reality you described as the new "male experience" is one where you are expected to alter your behavior in order to avoid offending people and that reality is already the reality for people who are not "straight white males." Perhaps you have experienced this, perhaps you haven't, but the intention of the comment was to draw the parallel between the expectations already on these people and the one's you're outraged have been inflected on you in regards to your working relationship with women. The way I phrased that comment had the effect of offending you for which I will have to suffer whatever consequences the public believes are necessary, regardless of my intention.