Future of Coding is an online community with a welcoming, cooperative, and revolutionary spirit. We are unified in the belief that the common practice of programming is tragically less humane than it could be. There's a world of possibilities that get more beautiful the further away from the norm you go. We're here to explore this world together, to discuss ideas about theory and practice, and to champion and support our members' research and development efforts.
One of many principles held by the community is that computing currently reflects the interests of a narrow minority of people. A directed effort is needed to broaden the accessibility of computing and amplify the influence of historically underrepresented people in shaping its future. Our community needs more gender diversity in particular, we're actively working to improve that. This code of conduct is one part of that effort.
It's called a "code of conduct" so that people are easily able to locate it, but don't get hung up on the name. The goal is that this document should help you feel more confident participating in our community by knowing what values we hold and how we express them.
The code of conduct applies to all community-affiliated spaces, including but not limited to the Slack, podcast, websites, repos, wikis, and meetups organized within the community. The examples listed below are illustrative, not exhaustive. When in doubt, ask! The moderators listed near the bottom will be happy to listen and help however they can.
We encourage you to
- Share your own work! Share the deep technical details. Start a wide-ranging discussion about the design of your work and how it'll advance a more humane future of computing.
- Share thoughts that you have, or things that you find, in the form of blog posts, talks, papers, books, conferences, wikis, repos, communities, trivia, quotes, rants, jokes, art, and all other expressions related to the past, present, or future of programming.
We discourage
- New members linking to startups, for-profit products, or other commercial interests, unless you also foster discussion about the work that relates it to our community's interests (as described above).
- Excessive self-promotion. While we encourage you to share and discuss your own work, you should join our community because you want to participate more broadly than that, and not because you want to hire, network, raise awareness, etc.
Please note that all things posted to the community are public and may be shared outside the community or stored in perpetuity, except for private direct messages which should not be shared without the consent of all involved parties.
We encourage you to
- Discuss the work of community members in the ways that they invite. If someone asks broadly for feedback on their work, please be kind in your critique, focus on the work itself, and be constructive. If someone asks for a specific kind of feedback (like encouragement, or feedback on a specific aspect of the work), please respect that request.
- Critique the material that other community members share links to, but please be respectful toward both the author of those materials and the person who shared them.
- Discuss politics, economics, representation, social movements and dynamics, and other maters of society and the world around us as they relate to the interests of our community. The tools for thought we want to build aren't just to help us do more thinking about our tools. We're trying to make tools to help people solve real problems in the world. That means we need to be able to talk about these problems. We also need to be able to recognize and discuss problems within our own cultures, like the lack of diversity.
We do not allow
- Hurtful or unwelcoming behaviour about or toward any person. This includes but is not limited to: ableism, homophobia, racism, sexism, transphobia, religious discrimination, violent language or threats, sexual language or images, insults or name-calling, personal attacks, condescension, demeaning language, deliberate intimidation, discriminatory jokes or language.
We have zero tolerance for people who commit acts of harassment, hate speech, or abuse anywhere, whether inside or outside the community.
When responding to something that violates this code of conduct, moderators will choose what to do at their discretion, but with particular attention to and support for the people who have been or could be hurt by the violation. Moderators may:
- Privately contact people to discuss the situation.
- Discuss the situation openly with the community.
- Delete posts or messages with or without notice.
- Temporarily or permanently remove severe or repeat offenders from all community-affiliated spaces.
- Revise this code of conduct and notify the community of the change.
If you see or experience a violation of this code of conduct, or if you are wondering whether something you'd like to share might run afoul, please talk to our moderator:
- Ivan Reese (@ivanreese in the Slack, or email admin@futureofcoding.org)
This code of conduct was informed by and derives from:
- Extensive discussion with people inside and outside the community.
- https://www.ashedryden.com/blog/codes-of-conduct-101-faq#coc101examples
- https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Community_anti-harassment/Policy
- https://confcodeofconduct.com
- http://citizencodeofconduct.org
- http://www.lambdaladies.com/code-of-conduct/
- https://www.meetup.com/The-Boston-Security-Meetup/about/
- https://golang.org/conduct
- https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/1/4/code-of-conduct/
- https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Etiquette
- https://www.recurse.com/code-of-conduct
- https://alarmingdevelopment.org/?p=1173
- https://medium.com/bits-and-behavior/im-trans-call-me-amy-8a72a3951964
- https://intenseminimalism.com/2020/the-impact-of-toxic-influencers-on-communities/