⚓ Tenets

An attempt has been made to lay out the tenets according to pleasant groupings and orderings, but this is not intended to be semantically significant.

The above tenets already substantially reflect current practices and policies, but have not yet been fully integrated into the rest of this policies page. Thank you for your patience.

⚓ Minimum requirements for inclusion

Only persons will be added to the list. This excludes teams, companies, organizations, etc. Of course, individual members of such groups may be eligible.

To be eligible for inclusion in the list, the candidate must have contributed something (anything) to the open-source Common Lisp ecosystem and have some kind of Common Lisp related web presence that they personally control.³

Proprietary contributions have no weight, since they cannot easily be reviewed by everyone.

Please open an issue if any eligible persons have not yet been added to the list, whether that is you or someone else.

Please note that nobody has received, nor will receive, any type of notification as a direct result of them getting added to the list, as that could certainly be seen as "spamming" or otherwise undesirable.⁴

⚓ This is an open, inclusive list.

To help ensure that the list is as comprehensive as possible, and to avoid politicizing the list, and to avoid dividing the community, and to avoid contentious discussions about who should or should not be included, nobody will be excluded from the list on the basis of alleged or actual reprehensible behavior.

This implies that inclusion in the list merely documents existence, and does not in any way imply affiliation or endorsement. One may simply block people they don't want to see.

Additionally, nobody will be excluded from the list on the basis of: age, body size, disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.⁵

⚓ This list strongly focuses on open-source Common Lisp.

Addenda aside, all information presented on the Common Lispers list must be strongly related to open-source Common Lisp.

Addenda don't have to have anything to do with Common Lisp, or Lisp, or even programming.

For now, social media account information does not have to have anything to do with open-source Common Lisp. See below for details.

⚓ Structure of an entry

The list is composed of entries. Each entry describes one person, and is composed of the following fields, which must all be composed of links only (for ensuring a minimum of concreteness and verifiability):

1. The Full name field is the person's full name as it is publicly disclosed by the person themselves to the Common Lisp community, and as is generally known to the Common Lisp community. This does not usually include any middle name, unless that person very consistently uses their middle name everywhere or unless an ambiguity would otherwise arise. If the full name is not publicly known, then just a nickname is fine.

2. The Nickname field is the person's informal name as generally known within the Common Lisp community.

   When a person is first added to the list, they may or may not be auto-assigned a nickname or linkable nickname, depending on the level of certainty or lack thereof about their preferred nickname in a Common Lisp context. Generally, a linkable nickname will be auto-assigned if at least 2 of their accounts have the same nickname, or substantially the same nickname when accounting for avoidance of nickname collisions among other users on the same service.

   Linkable nicknames are auto-assigned only when certainty is high, as changing a linkable nickname breaks all links referring to that nickname. Unlinkable nicknames are much less prejudicious if incorrect, since changing them breaks no links.

   List members with no nickname or an unlinkable nickname are encouraged to open an issue stating their preferred nickname, and they will then be assigned that linkable nickname. So as to avoid confusion and preserve the list's integrity, they must have a history of using that nickname in a Common Lisp context.

3. The Website or Blog field is the most general entry point to that person's website or blog that is specifically about open-source Common Lisp.

   The label for this field must be Website or Blog. The name of the website or blog itself is never used as label, due to fairness concerns. This way, websites or blogs with better or longer names don't get an advantage, and we avoid bloating up the list and getting a lot of variation in Website or Blog label length.

   If the blog supports a tag filtering option and a tag common-lisp, then the link must point to that tag. Else, if the lisp tag is supported, then that tag must be used. This applies even if most or all of the blog's posts use these tags anyway. This is to ensure that the link remains focused on Common Lisp even if multiple posts unrelated to Common Lisp are added in the future. If the link points to one of these tags rather than the blog itself, then this is reflected in the label with a mention such as (lisp tag).

   On occasion, a common-lisp or lisp tag may be ignored if it is believed that the tag is broken in some way, such as if posts are not consistently appropriately tagged.

4. The Social media accounts fields describe personal social media accounts of that person. Accounts controlled by more than one person are not eligible.

   For now, social media account information does not have to have anything to do with Common Lisp. This is due to the relative difficulty of formulating policies regarding what counts as sufficiently or insufficiently Common Lisp related activity on these accounts. However, any entries in the Funding category must have something to do with open-source programming. Some not very Common Lisp related social media accounts may be moved to the Addenda section in the future.

5. The Highlights field highlights up to 2 of that person's most notable open-source Common Lisp related accomplishments.

   This field is limited to 2 items. This confers several benefits:

   • We avoid devolving into a laundry list of accomplishments that would bloat up the list.
     For many people, only one or two of their contributions really stand out compared to their other ones anyway, so listing any further would confer diminishing returns, thereby lowering the overall quality of the list.
     It is up to the individual list members to properly organize their Common Lisp web presence (that the list conveniently points to) to properly feature their further contributions.

   • We avoid thorny questions about the relative notability of accomplishments, and also avoid large variations in the number of items, whether fair or unfair. Furthermore, list members for which the best contributions were incorrectly identified are less penalized than otherwise, relative to list members for which the best contributions were perfectly well identified.

   • We create a more welcoming environment for beginners, who might otherwise be intimidated with the prospect of being included in a list where many people have a long list of several notable accomplishments when they themselves have only one or two contributions to offer. We also avoid digging up several barely usable contributions from less experienced contributors.

   • We incite more casual users of the list to review the contributions of more persons overall, since there are less contributions to review per person.

   • The list is more stable, which means those who track its changes (such as by "watching" the repo on GitHub) experience a better signal to noise ratio.

   Books for which the full text is not freely legally available online (without any access restrictions such as a "loginwall") are not eligible, since their contents cannot be readily reviewed by everyone.

   List members who believe their best contributions have not been correctly identified are encouraged to open an issue to rectify the situation.

   Due to various factors, some list members may have been auto-assigned less than 2 highlights, in which case they are encouraged to submit further contributions to better take advantage of the 2 slots they are entitled to. For instance, if one particular contribution is believed to completely dwarf that list member's other contributions, then only that contribution may be auto-assigned, but said list member is then encouraged to submit another contribution that they wish to promote.

   Rarely, some list members may not be auto-assigned any highlights if the editor is particularly confused about which of their contributions are the most notable. This might arise for example if the contributions are vastly outside the fields of expertise or interest of the editor, or if many of said contributions are in a foreign language. So-afflicted list members are greatly encouraged to submit their best contributions to rectify the situation.

6. The Funding field indicates where you can fund the open-source activities of your fellow Common Lispers.
   This field must be related to open-source, but does not have to be related to Common Lisp.
   Please support your favorite Common Lispers!

7. The Addenda fields link to more general information about the person, and don't even have to have anything to do with programming.

   The Portal field is the most general entrypoint to the person's web presence. This field is omitted if it would point to the exact same location as the Website or Blog field, as the user should not have to waste their time browsing duplicate links.

   The Keybase field points to the person's keybase account, which is generally a good repository of verified general information about that person.
   Keybase accounts that don't link to at least one of the social media accounts featured in the list are not eligible.

⚓ BDFL

The BDFL of this list is Jean-Philippe Paradis.

Updates to the list will be driven by the policies, which are themselves driven by the BDFL's vision, which is itself driven by (what is believed to be) the needs of the open-source Common Lisp community, as notably reflected in community feedback.

For the foreseeable future, so as to ensure consistency and accountability, the BDFL will be the only editor of the list.

⚓ Removal

Only list members who no longer meet the minimum requirements for inclusion will be removed from the list.

Per the tenets of Unity, Diversity, Discoverability, Dignity, Usability, Practicality, Apoliticality, Integrity, Consistency, Reliability, Predictability and Availability, the BDFL cannot simply remove from the list⁶ any eligible persons who object to be included.

Those who cannot bear to see themselves being included in the Common Lispers list can solve the problem on their end by blocking themselves.⁷

Note that due to the Forkability, simply removing objectors would potentially cripple this instance of the list and thus incite a potentially much less scrupulous person to upload a (probably much less trustworthy) version of the list that restores all the information. Nothing good would come of this.

⚓ Footnotes

1. especially given the current political status of the BDFL within the community

2. This further incentivises the BDFL to be responsive, and provides a safeguard should he become unavailable in some way.

3. Deceased persons are not eligible for inclusion, since they cannot have some kind of Common Lisp related web presence that they personally control.

4. Of course, those who requested themselves to be added to the list will receive a notification...

5. List copy-pasted from Contributor Covenant 1.4.

6. nor omit to include in the list

7. LOL?