All participants in the Soft Skills Engineering Slack are required to comply with the following Code of Conduct. Administrators (see below for definition of administrators) will enforce this code throughout the Soft Skills Engineering Slack.

The Short Version

Be respectful of other people; respectfully ask people to stop if you are bothered; respect privacy; understand we’re mostly not-for-profit; and if you can’t resolve an issue then contact the Administrators. If you are being a problem, it will be apparent and you may be booted from the Soft Skills Engineering Slack.

The Long Version

Respect

The Soft Skills Engineering Slack is an intentionally positive community that recognizes and celebrates the creativity and collaboration of independent members and the diversity of skills, talents, experiences, cultures, and opinions that they bring to our community.

The Soft Skills Engineering Slack is an inclusive environment, based on treating all individuals respectfully, regardless of gender or gender identity (including transgender status), sexual orientation, age, disability, nationality, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), or career path.

We value respectful behavior above individual opinions.

Respectful behavior includes but is not limited to:

• Be considerate, kind, constructive, and helpful.
• Avoid demeaning, discriminatory, harassing, hateful, or physically threatening behavior, speech, and imagery.
• If you’re not sure, ask someone instead of assuming. No, really. Just ask the administrators. We’d rather hear from you than hear about something you said or did after the fact, and we are here to help.
• Don’t be a bystander. Role model respectful behaviour, but also help to address disrespect when you see it.

Disrespectful behavior outside this community may be considered a violation of this code of conduct at the discretion of the Administrators.

Privacy

This community is not a public space. However, no one has signed an non-disclosure agreement (“NDA”) to participate, and you should not presume anything you say here will remain private, so act accordingly. Protect IP and legally-protected information.

If you want to publicly disclose anything discussed here, use the Chatham House Rule as the guideline (“participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed”).

For attribution of specific content found on this Slack, we ask that you ask the originator of the content for permission. If you don’t receive consent in a reasonable period of time, we ask that you credit the “Soft Skills Engineering Slack.”

Not For Profit

This community is mostly not a place for obvious commercial activity such as recruiting or marketing except in channels dedicated to that purpose which include:

• #conferences
• #freelancing
• #jobs

Non-obvious commercial activity is less obvious. Well-intentioned user surveys of a specific channel are a common request and we ask that you:

• Ask permission of the channel.
• State clear intent for the purpose of the survey.
• Listen to the response of your peers.

We believe the above protocol is a useful approach for other types of non-obvious commercial activity.

If you join this community simply to take value from the community rather than contribute, the community will quickly notice and react. If you are wondering whether a specific action is commercial or not, please ask and calibrate in #slack-rules.

Resolve Peacefully

We believe peer-to-peer discussions, feedback, and corrections can help build a stronger, safer, and more welcoming community.

If you see someone violating any part of this Code of Conduct, we urge you to respectfully dissuade them from such behavior. Expect that others in the community wish to help keep the community respectful, and welcome your input in doing so.

If you experience disrespectful behavior toward yourself or anyone else and feel in any way unable or unwilling to respond or resolve it respectfully (for any reason), please bring it to the attention of an Administrator. We want to hear from you about anything that you feel is disrespectful, threatening, or just something that could make someone feel distressed in any way. We will listen and work to resolve the matter.

Apologize for Mistakes

Should you catch yourself behaving disrespectfully, or be confronted as such, listen intently, own up to your words and actions, and apologize 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.

Consequences

If you are unable to resolve a situation peacefully, please refer to our Incident Process and choose a course of action that suits the situation.

If the Administrators determine that a human is violating any part of this Code of Conduct, the Administrators may take any action they deem appropriate within this Slack team, up to and including removal from the Soft Skills Engineering Slack. Some other potential actions are warnings or timing out accounts for some time.

As Administrators, we will seek to resolve conflicts peacefully and in a manner that is positive for the community. We can’t foresee every situation. If an Administrator feels the best thing to do is to ask a disrespectful individual to leave, they will do so.

Membership in the Soft Skills Engineering Slack is a privilege, not a right. While we will try our best to communicate clearly and enforce well-understood rules, the Administrators may remove anyone from the Slack at any time for any reason.

Administrators

The administrator(s) of Soft Skills Engineering as of June 18th, 2019:

@jamison (Jamison Dance)

Thanks

Thank you to every Soft Skills Engineering Slack community member for helping to make our home the respectful and inclusive community that it is.

Thank you to the Rands Leadership Slack, which we cribbed this from.

V1.2 of this Code of Conduct was published on July 15th, 2019.

This Code of Conduct is released under the CC0 public domain license.