Page content¶
- Introduction
- Code of Conduct
- What is considered harassment?
- Language and communication
- Contacting moderators
- On using Slack
- Am I posting in the right channel?
- Can I test my bot here?
- Notes
Introduction¶
By contributing to Botwiki and participating in the Botmakers community you agree to our Code of Conduct. This is a living document and will be amended as necessary. Any updates will be immediately communicated on the #announcements channel in the Botmakers Slack group.
We understand that creating truly welcoming and safe spaces can be challenging, and we want to make sure our rules are clear and not arbitrary. We created a dedicated #code-of-conduct channel for openly discussing and explaining our rules, and every member is welcome to join in.
This Code of Conduct applies equally to all members and contributors of Botwiki and Botmakers, and in all online and offline spaces (examples include, but are not limited to, private and public communication in the Botmakers Slack group, emails, pull requests on GitHub, Twitter DMs between members, in-person contact, etc).
The group administrators reserve the right to exclude people from the Botwiki and Botmakers communities based on their past behavior, including behavior outside the Botwiki and Botmakers communities spaces and behavior towards people who are not in the Botwiki and Botmakers communities.
We will respect confidentiality requests for the purpose of protecting victims of abuse. At our discretion, we may publicly name a person about whom we’ve received harassment complaints, or privately warn third parties about them, if we believe that doing so will increase the safety of members of the Botwiki and Botmakers communities or the general public. We will not name harassment victims without their affirmative consent.
Code of Conduct¶
- Be kind, respectful and considerate to others. Not all of us will agree all the time, but disagreement is no excuse for poor behaviour and poor manners.
- Be careful in the words that you choose. Remember that sexist, racist, and other exclusionary jokes can be offensive to those around you. Do not insult or put down other participants. Harassment and other exclusionary behavior aren’t acceptable. See the What is considered harassment? section below.
- It is important that we resolve disagreements and differing views constructively. Being unable to understand why someone holds a viewpoint doesn’t mean that they’re wrong.
- This Code Of Conduct also applies to all of your bot creations — do not use them to harass, hurt, demean others.
An extra note on bots: We are a community of people who make “useful, interesting, artistic and friendly online bots”. If you are going to create spammy, shady, scammy bots to gain traffic to your site, game the system of some other website, etc, this is not the right community for you.
If a participant engages in harassing behavior, the Botwiki team and Botmakers administrators may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion from all the Botwiki and Botmakers community spaces and identification of the participant as a harasser to other community members and/or the general public.
Lastly, we are a community for sharing ideas. If someone comes up with something interesting, ask if you can join their project rather than “stealing” the idea for yourself. It’s just a nice thing to do.
If you do need some ideas to work on, have a look at the Bot Summit 2014 document or browse the #botIDEA hashtag on Twitter.
What is considered harassment?¶
- Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, race, immigration status, religion, or other identity marker. This includes anti-indigenous/nativeness and anti-blackness.
- Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment.
- Deliberate misgendering
- Gratuitous or off-topic sexual images or behaviour
- Physical contact and simulated physical contact (eg, textual descriptions like “hug” or “backrub”) without consent or after a request to stop.
- Threats of violence
- Incitement of violence towards any individual, including encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in self-harm
- Deliberate intimidation
- Stalking or following
- Harassing photography or recording, including logging online activity for harassment purposes
- Sustained disruption of discussion
- Unwelcome sexual attention
- Pattern of inappropriate social contact, such as requesting/assuming inappropriate levels of intimacy with others
- Continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease
- Deliberate “outing” of any aspect of a person’s identity without their consent except as necessary to protect vulnerable people from intentional abuse
- Publication of non-harassing private communication
- Jokes that resemble the above, such as “hipster racism”, still count as harassment even if meant satirically or ironically. See this article for background.
Language and communication¶
One of the main goals of Botwiki and Botmakers is to create a safe online space where everyone is welcome. Making this happen will require effort from everyone participating in our project and our community.
There will be some technical tools put in place that will make this easier — our Slack bot will be trained to recognize offensive language and privately notify the person who probably just didn’t know they were using terms that others find offensive. Until then, I’d like to ask everyone to read about gendered and ableist language, with some great resources being:
- Language Matters: Stop Using “Guys” to Address Mix-Gender Groups
- Doing Social Justice: 10 Reasons to Give Up Ableist Language
- List of disability-related terms with negative connotations
- Alternatives to using ableist slurs
(More links coming soon.)
Some more general reading if you’re having a problem with the concepts above:
(More links coming soon.)
Our general rule of thumb for identifying slurs is that slurs are words/expressions that describe things people can’t change about themselves while actually meaning “bad”.
If you see anyone using terms you find offensive or you believe would be offensive to certain groups of people, first try reaching out to the person privately. Also, be very careful about misunderstandings. These may happen particularly when all the nuances of communication, like body language or tone of voice are stripped away, like in an online setting. Also, remember that we are a group of people from all over the world, so people whose first language is not English will very likely learn about ableist language as a brand new concept.
Always contact the person you feel is being offensive and try to talk it out, then contact the moderator, if necessary.
Contacting moderators¶
Of you’d like to share feedback, suggestions, or if you have any concerns or want to report something, please contact the group administrators using the /sidekick command and clicking the Contact Moderators button.
For more contact options see our Contact page.
On using Slack¶
If you’re new to Slack, be sure to check out slack.com/is and for more advanced users, there is Using slash commands.
Am I posting in the right channel?¶
In our Slack group, we’re trying to keep the number of channels low and avoid spending time discussing how appropriate a channel is for the current topic. We have a dedicated website to keep the important information permanent and organized. And if the need arises, we’re more than happy to create a separate channel if the #general channel gets too cluttered.
Can I test my bot here?¶
Yes! Contact @stefan to set you up. Just make sure to check that your bot follows our Code of Conduct and neither you or your bot enage in spammy/harassing behavior (for example, don’t mass DM people, rather use the #help-and-feedback channel to ask people to participate).
Here’s a list of bots we’re playing with right now.
Notes¶
This Code of Conduct is based on and inspired by:
- HOWTO design a code of conduct for your community
- Django Code of Conduct
- LGBTQ in Technology Code of Conduct
If you have any comments or questions, feel free to open an issue or pull request on this repo, join the conversation in the #code-of-conduct channel, contact the Botmakers admins on Slack, or reach out directly to @fourtonfish on Twitter or via email.
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