Learnings of Open-source maintainer - Conflict resolution

In healthy communities, there is momentum and members are passionate to make contributions to effect change. It often involves diverse contributors with varying opinions and approaches. This can lead to conflicts. These could be due to design changes being proposed, Implementation details, different developers solving similar problem using different methods. There has to be an effective way to handle conflicts in timely fashion, stalemates are bad and hinder projects progress and can drive users away from projects.

So conflict resolution strategies are important, some common ones are

Code of conduct enforcement: provides a clear framework for addressing unacceptable behavior, promoting a more inclusive and respectful environment.

Consensus-Building and Voting: Contributors engage in discussions using mailing lists, issue trackers, Pull Requests reviews, forums, if consensus can not be reached then voting maybe held. PR reviews can help make the conflicts granular and help solve.

Mediation: Mediation by experienced and respected members of the community with certain social skills can sometimes help, they may not be maintainers, but an effective maintainer would know when to seek out such help.

Documentations: Clearly documentation reduces ambiguity and helps in conflict prevention. CONTRIBUTING.md file can be used for decision-making process outline and set correct expectations.

Piece-mealing changes: Offer gradual integration process e.g. next branch etc.

Forking: I think this is last resort. Sometimes that is the only way to move forward at the cost of fragmentation. Sometimes fragmentation can spark more innovation, you never know.