The Sheffield Digital Slack community is a free space for anyone who works in or has an interest in the city’s digital and technology sector. Every person who joins the community must read, understand and agree to the terms outlined on this page.

This code of conduct is here to protect people who are part of our Slack community. It gives you the assurance that any abuse or negative behaviour you experience will be taken seriously, and that there is a way for you to safely raise the issue.

Behaviour

The Sheffield Digital Slack team is a safe place for members to communicate, organise and find things out. It’s for you to connect with and be part of a community of people who share an interest in Sheffield’s tech and digital sector. We value respectful behaviour above individual opinions. We ask you to:

• be considerate, kind, constructive, and helpful
• avoid demeaning, discriminatory, harassing, hateful, or physically threatening behaviour, speech, and imagery
• speak to an admin instead of making assumptions, when you are not sure
• model respectful behaviour, but also help to address disrespect when you see it.

Should you catch yourself behaving disrespectfully, or be confronted about your behaviour, listen intently, own up to your words and actions, and apologise accordingly. No one is perfect and even well-intentioned people make mistakes. What matters is how you handle them and that you avoid repeating them in the future.

Harassment

We want the Sheffield Digital Slack team to be a fun, pleasant, and harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion. We do not tolerate harassment of members in any form. Harassment includes:

• offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental health, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, race or religion
• unwelcome comments about 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
• simulated physical contact, such as text-based descriptions like “hug” or “backrub“, without consent or after being asked 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
• sustained disruption of discussion
• unwelcome sexual attention
• continued one-on-one communication after requests to stop
• publication of non-harassing private communication.

Reporting

If you are being harassed, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact the admins. They’ll respond as quickly as they can. 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. We will not name harassment victims without their affirmative consent.

Consequences

If you are asked to stop any harassing behaviour, we expect you to comply immediately. If you engage in harassing behaviour, the admins may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including removing you from the Sheffield Digital Slack team and identifying you publicly as someone we’ve received complaints about.

Confidentiality

Please be mindful that things you say may at some point become public. We cannot prevent people from taking a screenshot of or otherwise logging the Sheffield Digital Slack team. We also can’t guarantee that every member’s login credentials and logged-in devices are secure. Files uploaded to Slack can be downloaded by anyone with a login. Please be cautious and do not share sensitive information that could harm you or other people if it became public.

Slack channel for meetup organisers

Sometimes, it is useful to speak to other meetup organisers in a confidential space. If you run a meetup, you can join the private #meetup-ops channel on the Sheffield Digital Slack community, which is exclusively for meetup organisers and Sheffield Digital’s admins.

Credits and license

This code of conduct is based on Annalee Flower Horne’s Sample Slack Code of Conduct, which is in turn based on Geek Feminism’s Community Anti-Harassment Policy. We have adapted the Sample Slack Code of Conduct for our own use under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. We’ve also used and adapted parts of the Rands Leadership Slack Code of Conduct, which is released under the CC0 public domain licence.

Version 2

This is version 2 of the Sheffield Digital Slack community code of conduct. It was last updated by Iain Broome on 17 September 2018.