In your communications online, there will inevitably be people with whom you may disagree, or find it difficult to cooperate. Accept that, but even so, remain respectful. Disagreement is no excuse for poor behaviour or personal attacks, and a community in which people feel threatened is not a healthy community.
We all have our own ways of reaching our common goal which may differ from your ways. Assume that other people are working towards this goal.
Do keep in mind that others may not be native English speakers or may have different cultural backgrounds.
There is a lot to do, but never enough time to do things. It's good to ask for help when you need it. Similarly, offers for help should be seen in the context of our shared mission of spreading hacker culture and free, open-source software.
When you make something for the benefit of the community, be willing to explain to others how it works, so that they can build on your work to make it even better.
Keep in mind that what you write once will be read by hundreds of persons. Writing a short message means people can understand the conversation as efficiently as possible. When a long explanation is necessary, consider adding a summary.
Try to bring new arguments to a conversation so that each message adds something unique to the thread, keeping in mind that the rest of the thread still contains the other messages with arguments that have already been made.
Try to stay on topic, especially in discussions that are already fairly large.
While this code of conduct should be adhered to by participants, we recognize that sometimes people may have a bad day, or be unaware of some of the guidelines in this code of conduct. When that happens, you may reply to them and point out this code of conduct. Such messages may be in public or in private, whatever is most appropriate. However, regardless of whether the message is public or not, it should still adhere to the relevant parts of this code of conduct; in particular, it should not be abusive or disrespectful. Assume good faith; it is more likely that participants are unaware of their bad behaviour than that they intentionally try to degrade the quality of the discussion.
Serious or persistent offenders will be temporarily or permanently banned from communicating on NUS Hackers-maintained platforms. Complaints should be made (in private) to the NUS Hackers Coreteam.
This document was adapted from the Debian Code of Conduct.