Chaitin School

Code of Conduct

We aim to be inclusive to the largest number of contributors, with the most varied and diverse backgrounds possible. We are committed to providing a friendly, safe, welcoming environment for everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, ability, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, religion, age.

We want to do considerably better than the average group of software-industry people in creating a very friendly space. We especially want to cater to the needs of people that are members of software-industry minorities.

We aim to create a safe space in terms of it being completely free of bias and prejudice, however, we want to be open to radical ideas and different cultures.

We want to adopt a collective approach to create a safe and comfortable environment for everyone. Let’s all assume an active role to help foster this.

OK behaviour

Let’s:

Not OK behaviour

Not OK behaviours includes intimidating, harassing, abusive, discriminatory, derogatory, demeaning speech or actions by any participant, regardless of their popularity and prominence.

We do not welcome semi-unfriendly responses and social cues. For example, it’s quite an uncomfortable feeling that one experiences when they ask something along the lines of “what is X” or “who is Y” and someone else responds with “What?! I can’t believe you don’t know what X is!” or "Wow! You don’t know who Y is?!”. Let’s all refrain from these. Asking about things one does not know is something we want to enable and augment as much as possible—not the opposite.

Not OK behaviour is absolutely not acceptable and will not be tolerated. Anyone asked to stop not OK behaviour is expected to comply immediately.

Notify and/or Act

If you are subject to or witness unacceptable behaviour we have an Incident response process that one can follow. One can also notify someone else, even if not sure of the acceptability or unacceptibility of the behaviour. We have a list of community members to contact at the bottom of this page.

Even if there is behaviour not outlined as unacceptable by this text, yet it causes uncomfortableness, please do follow the above.

We take this part very seriously while at the same time we want to act with kindness and understanding for all community members.

Scope

We expect all community participants to abide by this Code of Conduct in all community venues—online and in-person—as well as in all one-on-one communications pertaining to community business.

Incident response

We have a strict Code of Conduct to create an open space where everybody feels welcomed. However, if there is someone not following our Code of Conduct, it might be hard to identify and respond to it. We recommend:

  1. Take some space. We recommend to first create some distance between you and the person who’s engaging at potentially unacceptable behaviour. This will hopefully help one see the incident more clearly.
  2. Notify someone else. Hopefully there is someone in this event you find trustworthy. Share your concern with them, see what they think.
  3. Identify the issue. It’s a good idea to acquire a clear understanding of the problematic behavior so that it can be communicated clearly and effectively.
  4. Assess response. Various levels of response are valid. In addition to one’s current actions, it’s worth taking into consideration past actions as well as their response. Did they become aware of their problematic behaviour? Have they repeatedly ignored signs of their behaviour causing stress? Has anyone talked to them about this before?
  5. Act. This can be either talking to them direcly, talking to someone else, or even bringing the problem forward as a group discussion. Eventually, the community can decide how to handle the matter together.

The above lack strict structure as well as defined outcomes. We are a small community and, as we learn more, we can make this process more detailed.

Handling disagreements

Inevitably, there will be disagreements. How we handle them is one more indication of our skills and the quality of our community. We don’t want to have rigid rules for such matters, so two points to follow are:

Past Incidents

We keep a log of past incidents along with our response to them:

Thanks

We want to thank the authors of the Berlin Code of Conduct and the Portland Ruby Brigade and the Recurse Center Code of Conduct, who indirectly helped us define this text.

Contact list