# Participating in Ladybird

Ladybird is developed by a group of project maintainers, who introduce all changes to the codebase. We do not accept
pull requests from non-maintainers and do not allow code change proposals through any other route.

Your involvement still matters: clear bug reports, reductions, website testing, standards discussion, design discussion,
security reports, and technical feedback all help move the project forward.

Read [the Ladybird documentation](https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/tree/master/Documentation) if you'd like to understand how Ladybird works.

## Communication

Join [our Discord server](https://discord.gg/nvfjVJ4Svh) to participate in development discussion.

## Issue policy

Please file any bugs you find, keeping the following in mind:

* One issue per bug. Putting multiple things in the same issue makes both discussion and completion unnecessarily complicated.
* Follow the [detailed issue-reporting guidelines](ISSUES.md).
* No build issues (or other support requests). If the GitHub Actions CI build succeeds, the build problem is most likely on your side. Work it out locally, or ask in the `#build-problems` channel on Discord.
* Don't comment on issues just to add a joke or irrelevant commentary. Hundreds of people get notified about comments so let's keep them relevant.

## Project governance

The Ladybird project is driven by the [Ladybird Browser Initiative](https://ladybird.org/), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

## Human language policy

In Ladybird, we treat human language as seriously as we do programming language.

The following applies to all user-facing strings, code, comments, and commit messages:

* The official project language is American English with ISO 8601 dates and metric units.
* Use proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
* Write in an authoritative and technical tone.
* Avoid contractions, slang, and idioms.
* Avoid humor, sarcasm, and other forms of non-literal language.
* Use gender-neutral pronouns, except when referring to a specific person.

Note that this also applies to debug logging and other internal strings, as they may be exposed to users in the future.

## On neutrality

Our goal is to build a browser for everyone, irrespective of their specific opinions and worldviews.
To achieve this, we strive to set our differences aside and focus on the shared goal of building the browser.

This means:
- We welcome involvement from anyone who is committed to the project's goals and respects the collaborative environment.
- Our discussions and work will remain strictly related to browser development and web standards. We do not take positions on issues outside this scope.
- The project will not be used as a platform to advertise or promote causes unrelated to browser development or web standards.
- To maintain a focused and productive environment, discussions on societal politics and other divisive topics are discouraged in project spaces.

We encourage everyone to share their personal views and opinions outside project spaces, so we can keep them focused on project goals.

## On bad-faith contributions and brigading

We reserve the right to reject issues and other interactions that appear to be motivated by bad faith.

Additionally, anyone found participating in social media brigading of Ladybird will be permanently banned from the project.
