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GitHub Community Guidelines
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In this article
Millions of developers across the world host millions of projects—both open and closed source—on GitHub. We're fortunate to be able to play a part in enabling collaboration across the developer community every day, which is a responsibility we don’t take lightly. Together, we all have the exciting opportunity to make this a community we can be proud of.
Our diverse user base brings different perspectives, ideas, and experiences, and ranges from people who created their first "Hello World" project last week to the most well-known software developers in the world. We are committed to making GitHub an environment that welcomes all the different voices and perspectives our community has to offer, while maintaining a safe place for developers to do their best work.
By outlining what we think a safe, welcoming, and productive community looks like at GitHub, we hope to help you understand how best to interact and collaborate on our platform in line with our Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policies.
We encourage our community members to communicate expectations clearly, moderate their projects where possible, and report any content that may violate our policies. GitHub Staff will investigate any reports of abuse, and may moderate public content on our site that we determine to be in violation of our Terms of Service.
Maintaining a strong community
The primary purpose of the GitHub community is to collaborate on software projects. We are committed to maintaining a community where users are free to express themselves and challenge one another's ideas, both technical and otherwise. At the same time, it's important that users remain respectful and allow space for others to contribute openly. In order to foster both a safe and productive environment, we encourage our community members to look to these guidelines to inform how they interact on our platform. Below, you’ll find some suggestions for how to have successful interactions as a valued member of the GitHub community.
Be welcoming and open-minded - New users join our community each day. Some are well-established developers, while others are just beginning. Be open to other ideas and experience levels. Make room for opinions other than your own and be welcoming to new collaborators and those just getting started.
Be respectful - Working in a collaborative environment means disagreements may happen. But remember to criticize ideas, not people. Share thoughtful, constructive criticism and be courteous to those you interact with. If you’re unable to engage respectfully, consider taking a step back or using some of our moderation tools to deescalate a tense situation.
Be empathetic - GitHub is a global community with people from a wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives, many of which may not be your own. Try to put yourself in others’ shoes and understand their feelings before you address them. Do your best to help make GitHub a community where others feel safe to make contributions, participate in discussions, and share different ideas.
What if something or someone offends you?
While some disagreements can be resolved with direct, respectful communication between community members, we understand that is not always the case. We encourage our community to contact GitHub Support through the GitHub Support portal when they believe content or activity they’ve encountered violates our policies. However, if you run into something or someone on the site that you find objectionable, here are some ways GitHub enables you to take action: