The mission of Pharos is to advance science, policy, and business efforts to identify hazardous substances through chemical hazard assessment and find safer substitutes through alternatives assessment. We aim to do this by developing community-accessible tools and information resources.
Your engagement in this project should be grounded in your support of these goals.
We aspire to build a productive, agile, and amicable community that can welcome new ideas in a complex field, continually improve community resources, and foster collaboration between groups with very different needs, interests and skills. We gain strength from diversity, and actively seek participation from those who enhance it. This Code of Conduct exists to ensure that diverse groups collaborate and exchange ideas to mutual advantage and benefit. We will challenge prejudice that could jeopardize the participation of any person in the project.
This Code of Conduct governs how we behave in public or in private whenever the project will be affected by our actions. We expect it to be honored by everyone who participates in, represents, or claims affiliation with the project—officially or informally.
We strive to:
This Code is not exhaustive or complete. It is not a rulebook; it serves to distil our common understanding of a collaborative, shared environment and goals.
We encourage all forms of participation in Pharos, including: engaging in forum discussions by posting comments, questions or answers; peer reviewing work done by others; contributing to or editing shared information resources; or working on collaborative projects.
We expect that everyone who participates in Pharos does so with the goal of advancing the project’s mission.
Pharos is designed to support the development, improvement, and communication of data and tools for hazard assessment and safer substitution. We recognize the need for critical debate about broader issues, but we do not consider Pharos to be the appropriate place for those debates. In particular, contributions that seek to undermine or invalidate the goals and practices of safer substitution are considered to be outside of the project’s mission and are subject to removal or other sanctions (see below).
We ask all participants to adhere to the following guidelines:
Our community will not tolerate disruptive behavior. We consider the following behavior to be disruptive: intimidating, threatening, or disrespectful language; contributions made without disclosing conflicts of interest; and contributions that are outside of the Pharos mission.
Conflicts of interest (COI) may arise when contributing to Pharos on topics that have bearing on one’s financial interests or those of one’s affiliates. A COI is a type of situation affecting a person, not a judgment of that person’s character.
The engagement of community members with potential COI is not discouraged in Phaors. For example, we fully support the participation of users who work with companies seeking to commercialize safer substances and products.
If participants fail to disclose a potential COI, or if particular contributions threaten the integrity of Pharos, administrators may take any of the actions listed below to mitigate the problem.
As a community, we must act to ensure that decisions are credible even if they must occasionally be unpopular, difficult or favourable to the interests of one group over another.
As the owner of the site and convener of the Pharos community, HBN reserves the right to take any actions it deems necessary to mitigate contributions or users deemed by the community to be disruptive or damaging to the Pharos. HBN will seek to take the minimum actions possible and only escalate as deemed necessary. Actions roughly in order of escalation may include:
Users who feel they have been subject to sanctions unfairly may appeal. User rights and posts will be restored at the discretion of HBN.
To appeal, send an email to datacommons@healthymaterials.net justifying the value of the content/perspective previously offered to the Forum community. Please reference any source materials that support claims that were determined by HBN to be problematic.
Appeals will be reviewed by HBN no less frequently than quarterly. In the event that an appeal is denied, the original sanction issued will stand.
This Code of Conduct is complementary to the requirements of the Terms of Service. No provision stated here negates any of the responsibilities outlined in this website’s Terms of Service.
The Pharos Code of Conduct is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license. You may re-use it for your own project, and modify it as you wish, just please allow others to use your modifications. It is based on the Ubuntu Code of Conduct and the Collaborative on Health and the Environment’s “CHEtiquette”.