Our Pledge

The Qiskit Community is dedicated to our values of treating every individual with respect and dignity. In the interest of fostering an open and welcoming environment, all participants, including attendees, speakers, sponsors, volunteers, online contributors, and IBM employees are expected to show courtesy for each other and our community by creating a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, personal appearance, disability, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, body size, level of experience, nationality, race, religion, caste, or sexual identity and orientation. Expected behavior applies to both online and offline engagement within the Qiskit Community.   The Qiskit community prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. The needs of the most vulnerable in any given situation will be prioritized.

Scope

This Code of Conduct applies both within project spaces and in public spaces when an individual is engaging with Qiskit or its community. Examples include attending a Qiskit event, contributing to online projects, commentary on Slack, or representing a project or community, including using an official project e-mail address, posting via an official social media account, or acting as an appointed representative at an online or offline event. Representation of a project may be further defined and clarified by project maintainers.  

Our Standards

Examples of behavior that contributes to creating a positive environment include:

• Using welcoming and inclusive language
• Being respectful of differing viewpoints, experiences, and cultures
• Gracefully accepting constructive criticism
• Focusing on what is best for the community
• Showing empathy towards other community members
• Being mindful of your surroundings and your fellow participants and listening to others
• Valuing the contributions of all participants
• Engaging in collaboration before conflict
• Pointing out unintentionally racist, sexist, casteist, or biased comments and jokes made by community members when they happen

Examples of unacceptable behavior by participants, even when presented as "ironic" or "joking," include:

• The use of sexualized language or imagery and unwelcome physical contact, sexual attention, or advances
• Trolling, insulting/derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks
• Public or private harassment, including offensive or degrading language
• Publishing others' private information, such as a physical or electronic address, without explicit permission. This includes any sort of "outing" of any aspect of someone's identity without their consent.
• Publishing screenshots or quotes, especially from identity slack channels, private chat, or public events, without all quoted users' explicit consent.
• Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting

Responsibilities & Enforcement

Qiskit is responsible for clarifying the standards of acceptable behavior and are expected to take appropriate and fair corrective action in response to any instances of unacceptable behavior.

If a participant or contributor engages in negative or harmful behavior, Qiskit will take any action they deem appropriate, including but not limited to issuing warnings, expulsion from an event with no refund, deleting comments, permanent banning from future events or online community, or calling local law enforcement. Qiskit has the right and responsibility to remove, edit, or reject comments, commits, code, wiki edits, issues, and other contributions that are not aligned to this Code of Conduct, or to temporarily or permanently ban any contributor or participant for other behaviors that they deem inappropriate, threatening, offensive, or harmful.

If you see a Code of Conduct violation:

1. If you feel comfortable, let the person know that what they did is not appropriate and ask them to stop and/or edit or delete their message(s) or comment(s).
2. If the person does not immediately stop the behavior or correct the issue, or if you're uncomfortable speaking up, fill out the anonymous Code of Conduct violation report.
3. The Qiskit Community will open an investigation upon receiving your form entry. When reporting, please include any relevant details, links, screenshots, context, or other information that may be used to better understand and resolve the situation.
4. If the code of conduct violation occurs at an event and requires immediate response or contains a concern about an individual attending an upcoming event, contact the event's on-call Code of Conduct point of contact listed in the event specific code of conduct document. If you don't feel comfortable speaking to the point of contact in person, fill out a form entry and include the details of the event.
5. If an IBM employee witnesses a Code of Conduct violation at any time, such as at events, in a Slack channel, or open source forums, it is their responsibility to file a Code of Conduct violation report.

IBM employees noticing Qiskit Code of Conduct and IBM Business Conduct Guidelines violations by other IBM employees should ensure they follow IBM's own internal HR reporting protocols prior to submitting a report to the Qiskit Code of Conduct violation report. Qiskit will respond to alleged violations by IBM employees by first confirming that the proper HR reporting protocols have been followed before using an internal enforcement matrix tool to take further action, such as for activities that may be in violation of the Qiskit Code of Conduct but not the IBM Business Conduct Guidelines.