Community guidelines

OSCR helps people read, check, reuse and improve research code. Many researchers do not publish their code, so be generous and precise with those who do.

• Discuss the code and the paper. A comment such as "Line 42 filters at order 4; §2.3 says 2" helps. Do not judge the authors.
• Bring evidence. A mismatch names the paragraph and the lines; a reproduction failure says what you ran, on what data and environment, and what came out. The research issue forms ask for it.
• Assume good faith. Most mismatches are honest mistakes or undocumented choices. Ask before concluding.
• Give credit. Cite papers by their DOI and code by its commit; say where an idea or a fix comes from.
• Keep private things private. Do not post someone's contact details, data about patients or participants, or a secret key.
• Stay on topic. Open one issue per problem; a paper's discussion is about that paper.
• Accept a "no". Authors and maintainers decide what goes into their code; they may lock a heated conversation or limit interactions for a while.
• If someone behaves badly, use the "Report" link or block them, and do not retaliate. The owner reads every report.

What is not allowed at all is in the acceptable-use policy; what happens then is in the terms.