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+# Contributing
+
+Vowpal Wabbit thrives on its community. This document contains some guidelines
+to make contributing easier.
+
+## Process
+
+1. [Reach out if you want feedback](#reaching-out)
+1. [Implement the change and its tests](#implementation)
+1. [Start a pull request & address comments](#pull-request)
+1. [Merge](#merge)
+
+### Reaching out
+
+Open an issue if you want feedback on your idea before you code. If it's
+something non trivial we suggest reaching out to make sure it aligns with the
+project goals (performance implications, design requirements, interfaces, etc.).
+This will let us have a brief discussion about the problem and, hopefully,
+identify some potential pitfalls before too much time is spent on your part.
+
+If you're just fixing typos or small bugs there's no need to reach out
+beforehand.
+
+### Implementation
+
+* Fork the repository on GitHub
+* Start on a new topic branch off of master
+* Instructions for getting Vowpal Wabbit building and running the tests are in the
+  [Wiki](https://github.com/VowpalWabbit/vowpal_wabbit/wiki)
+* Aim for each pull request to have one goal. If the PR starts to get too large,
+  consider splitting it into multiple, independent pull requests
+    * Some changes are more naturally authored in the same pull request. This is
+      fine, though we find this to be a rare occurrence. These sort of changes
+      are harder to review
+* Aim to add tests that exercise the new behaviour and make sure that all the
+  tests continue to pass
+
+### Pull request
+
+Start a GitHub pull request to merge your topic branch into the [main repository's master branch](https://github.com/VowpalWabbit/vowpal_wabbit/tree/master).
+
+When you submit a pull request, a suite of builds and tests will be run
+automatically, and the results will show up in the "Checks" section of the PR.
+Generally, we'll wait for these to all pass before we review your PR. If you
+need help resolving build or test issues feel free to reach out in the comments
+of your PR.
+
+We suggest ticking "Allow edits and access to secrets by maintainers" so that we
+can contribute to your PR if need be.
+
+### Merge
+
+Once the comments in the pull request have been addressed, we will merge your
+changes. Thank you for helping improve Vowpal Wabbit!
+
+By default we'll perform a squash merge, so don't worry if the commit history is
+messy.
+
+# Reporting Security Issues
+
+Security issues and bugs should be reported privately, via email, to `vowpalwabbit-security [a t] hunch.net`
+# Contact us
+
+Ways to get in contact can be found [here](https://github.com/VowpalWabbit/vowpal_wabbit/issues/new/choose).
+
+# Code of Conduct
+
+Although VW is not a Microsoft project, we follow the 
+[Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct](https://opensource.microsoft.com/codeofconduct/).
+For more information see the
+[Code of Conduct FAQ](https://opensource.microsoft.com/codeofconduct/faq/)