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Governance Policy for Awesome Lists

This document outlines the governance model, decision-making process, quality standards, and long-term stewardship guidelines for the Awesome Lists project.

The goal is to ensure high-quality curation, maintain consistency across lists, and promote a healthy, sustainable open-source ecosystem.

1. Project Goals

The Awesome Lists project exists to:

  • Curate high-quality, domain-focused resources across technology, science, digital culture, sustainability, and travel.
  • Support open knowledge, education, and community-driven learning.
  • Maintain a consistent ecosystem of well-organized, non-promotional, useful lists.

2. Roles & Responsibilities

2.1. Maintainer / Steward (Project Owner)

Responsible for the long-term direction and quality of the project.

Duties include:

  • Reviewing and merging PRs.
  • Maintaining consistency across all lists.
  • Enforcing quality standards.
  • Creating new lists where meaningful.
  • Managing roadmap priorities.
  • Rejecting low-value or self-promotional contributions.
  • Updating governance and contribution rules as needed.

Current Maintainer: Brandon Himpfen (project founder)

2.2. Contributors

Anyone submitting:

  • Pull requests.
  • Bug reports.
  • New list proposals.
  • Resource updates.

Contributors must follow the guidelines in CONTRIBUTING.md.

2.3. External Curators (Optional Future Role)

Trusted maintainers of large subdomains (e.g., AI, Travel, Sustainability) may be appointed later.

3. Decision-Making Process

3.1. PR Review Workflow

All pull requests are reviewed using these criteria:

  1. Quality — Content must be meaningful, non-spam, and valuable.
  2. Reputation — Linked repositories should show substance (not vanity repos).
  3. Relevance — Must fit the list topic clearly.
  4. Neutrality — No self-promotion or commercial bias.
  5. Consistency — Must follow formatting conventions.

The maintainer has final discretion to approve or decline contributions.

3.2. Adding New Lists

A new awesome list may be added only if:

  • The topic has a real ecosystem (not niche for one product/company)
  • A GitHub repo already exists with meaningful content, OR
  • The topic is strategic and appears in the project roadmap

Lists created solely to get listed will not be accepted.

3.3. Deprecation of Lists

A list may be deprecated if:

  • It becomes unmaintained for an extended period.
  • It becomes obsolete or redundant.
  • It violates Awesome List standards.

Deprecation steps:

  1. Add a "Deprecated" notice.
  2. Archive or remove from index if necessary.
  3. Update roadmap accordingly.

4. Curation Standards

All entries must meet these criteria:

  • Non-promotional
  • Publicly accessible (no paywalls unless necessary for books/courses)
  • Meaningful resource count — not empty or placeholder repos
  • Stable maintenance (recent updates or evergreen value)
  • Clear descriptions
  • Follows awesome list conventions

5. Release & Update Process

  • Updates are merged regularly as time permits.
  • Major reorganizations follow the roadmap.
  • New sections added gradually to maintain quality.
  • Quarterly review of all lists to ensure freshness.

6. Long-Term Stewardship

The project aims to:

  • Grow slowly but intentionally.
  • Prioritize quality over volume.
  • Expand based on community demand and clear ecosystems.
  • Support subprojects (e.g., AI, Travel, Sustainability) with depth.
  • Avoid dilution by rejecting forced or low-value additions.

7. Contact

For governance questions or proposals:

Issues: open a GitHub Issue in this repository.
PRs: follow the template in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Maintained with care for the open-source community 💙.