- Don't be a troll
- Be respectful of others, including non-members
- Do not harass others
- All content must be "safe for work"
- Do not share personal information of others to people outside the community
- Don't spam the channels with links, or links to pages, for the purpose of monetization of user views and which provide no value to the community
This is a safe space, let's keep it that way.
Be kind. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work, thoughts or opinions. A good critical comment teaches us something.
ZATech aims to provide a space for specific technical communities to gather, share and learn from each other. These form our "on topic" spaces, which are the primary focus of our community.
Our main public channels are dedicated to specific technologies, programming languages, frameworks, and technical disciplines. For example #php, #typescript, #python etc. These spaces are intended for in-depth, focused discussions related to their respective topics.
There are also slightly adjacent channels such as #jobpostings or #freelance-discuss which are highly valuable to the community.
We recognize the importance of more casual and generic online 3rd spaces. Therefore, we allow some "off topic" channels to exist. These range from region-based channels (e.g., #capetown) to sports such as #rugby or #f1 and so on.
These off-topic spaces are valuable for networking, community building, and providing a more relaxed environment for members to interact.
Some topics, while potentially interesting, have shown a tendency to lead to heated debates and conflicts within our community. To maintain a positive and productive environment, we discourage extensive discussions on:
- Politics
- Religion
- Controversial current events (e.g. COVID-19)
- Personal ideologies
- Divisive social issues
When these topics surface, members often struggle to maintain courteous and curious discussions. Such conversations often quickly escalate into conflicts, detracting from the community's primary purpose and potentially violating our code of conduct (personal attacks, trolling, etc).
It's important to note that we don't aim to create a precise list of disallowed behaviors or topics. Instead, we appeal to general values and the intended spirit of our community. This approach allows for flexibility and interpretation, recognizing that clear-cut rules can lead to semantic arguments and bureaucratic complexities.
There isn't anything more soul destroying than trying to codify every exact topic or context and hair-split every single interaction. This is to say that while there is a high level list of discouraged topics, a lot of very benign and common discussions can be classified under these labels. It isn't anyone's intention to crack down on every single one of these benign discussions.
The admin team strives to avoid making value judgments on individual beliefs or ideologies. By discouraging certain topics, we aim to create an environment where the focus remains on our shared interests in technology, rather than potentially divisive subjects.
We ask members to be mindful of these guidelines and to avoid conversations that veer into discouraged territory. If you're unsure whether a topic is appropriate, please consult with an admin. Remember, interpretation of these guidelines is necessary, and the admin team is responsible for making these judgments to maintain the community's spirit.
Our goal is to foster a welcoming, inclusive, and productive environment for all members. By focusing on our shared interests in technology and maintaining respectful boundaries, we can ensure that ZATech remains a valuable resource for our community while avoiding the pitfalls of overly specific rules or bureaucratic processes.
“ZATech” in this document refers to the ZATech Slack organization at https://zatech.slack.com/. “The administrators” refers to the administrators on this organization, which can be accessed here, or by accessing "Workspace Directory" in the top-right drop-down menu on the web, and from the settings button next to name and title select Admins. (You must be a member of the organization to view.)
ZATech is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone. We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form.
This code of conduct applies to all ZATech spaces, including public channels, private channels and direct messages, both online and off. Anyone who violates this code of conduct may be sanctioned or expelled from these spaces at the discretion of the administrators.
Some ZATech spaces may have additional rules in place, which will be made clearly available to participants. Participants are responsible for knowing and abiding by these rules.
Harassment includes:
- Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion
- Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment.
- Deliberate misgendering or use of “dead” or rejected names
- Gratuitous or off-topic sexual images or behaviour in spaces where they’re not appropriate
- 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
While the community aims to be a place for members of the community to meet and connect, it's also important to respect each other's privacy. If you feel as though a service you provide or business you run may be of use to another member, please respect their privacy and first ask publicly if you may contact them about such discussions before sending unsolicited messages.
ZATech is first and foremost intended to be a safe space for people to talk, share and collaborate. Not somewhere they'll be solicited unless it's expressely requested. Therefore, the following are specific conditions regarding job postings and recruitment.
- Unsolicited recruiting of any sort is not allowed on ZATech under any circumstances.
- Users (including admins) may not under any circumstances share personal details of ZATech members with recruiters without that user's explicit consent.
- Advertising an opportunity for which you are the employer of record is allowed within the #jobpostings channel. More information on this process is available on the wiki.
- If you are a professional recruiter, i.e. someone who earns a commission by placing talent for clients you may contact Nic (@n1c) or join #jobpostings-recruiters to discuss posting in the #jobpostings channel for a fee.
- Opportunities must not, under any circumstances, use referral program links where the poster of the message could benefit, e.g. via earning a commission.
If you are being harassed by a member of ZATech, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns there are a few methods for reporting. Administrators will respond as soon as they are able. If the person who is harassing you is on the admin team, they will recuse themselves from handling your incident. Listed from most public to most anonymous:
- Use the "Report an Issue" workflow in #asktheadmins
- Create a private channel with the admins
- Create a private channel called
admins-$YOUR_USERNAME, e.g.admins-cdanvers - Invite the admin team to your new private channel using
/invite @adminteam
- Create a private channel called
- DM an administrator
- Submit an anonymous report
This code of conduct applies to ZATech spaces, but if you are being harassed by a member of ZATech outside of our spaces, we still want to know about it. We will take all good-faith reports of harassment by ZATech members, especially the administrators, seriously. This includes harassment outside our spaces and harassment that took place at any point in time. The abuse team reserves the right to exclude people from ZATech based on their past behavior, including behavior outside ZATech spaces and behavior towards people who are not members of the ZATech community.
In order to protect volunteers from abuse and burnout, we reserve the right to reject any report we believe to have been made in bad faith. Reports intended to silence legitimate criticism may be deleted without response.
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 ZATech members or the general public. We will not name harassment victims without their affirmative consent.
The ZATech community is a collection of professionals, as such it is expected that the content made available by members of the community should at all times adhere to the acceptable content policy. This policy is intended to protect the community's image, as well as the image of its members, through restrictions on certain classes of content which may be deemed to be unsuitable in a work or family context.
Links to content are deemed as acceptable as the content within.
Classes of content which we deem to be unsuitable include:
- Any COVID-19 related discussions in public except for in #vaccination-celebration
- Pornographic or sexually suggestive material, either in graphic or text form.
- Depictions of physical or emotional abuse, either in graphic or text form.
- Persecution of any individual as a result of their race, gender, religion or other physical traits.
- Material intended to, without basis, harm the reputation of any individual whether a member or not.
- Unsolicited advertising with the exception of job offers in the #jobpostings channel.
- Links, or links to pages, for the purpose of monetization of user views and which provide no value to the ZATech community.
- Content infringing on copyright laws.
As a quick self-check, ask yourself whether you would like someone's child to see the content you are posting. If the answer is "no", then there's a good chance you shouldn't be posting it on the ZATech community.
Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately.
If a participant engages in harassing behavior, the administrators may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion from all ZATech spaces and identification of the participant as a harasser to other ZATech members and/or the general public.
Intentionally evading exclusions, bans, suspensions, restrictions, or otherwise interfering with the admin team's decisions and actions are not permitted.
The Operators may, but are not obligated to, monitor or review any areas on the Slack where users transmit or post communications or communicate solely with each other, including but not limited to public and private channels, and the content of any such communications. The Operators, however, will have no liability related to the content of any such communications, whether or not arising under the laws of copyright, libel, privacy, obscenity, or otherwise. The Operators may edit or remove content on the the Slack at their discretion at any time.
If you feel there are aspects to this code of conduct which should be modified, please open a pull request with your suggested changes at https://github.com/zatech/code-of-conduct.
This Code of Conduct is heavily based on the LGBTQ in Tech Code of Conduct and the Offline First Code of Conduct for Slack.