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Proposed Code of Conduct #22

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88 changes: 88 additions & 0 deletions organizational/conduct.rst
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Code of Conduct
===============

Hacker Society [#hacsoc]_ is, as Tim wrote in :doc:`hacsoc`, about an open
society:
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I would change this to restate the mission of Hacker Society.

The Mission of Hacker Society

A time and place for people to learn about technology from each other, in order to build a community, to empower the individual, promote equality, and build an open society.

Open Society: An open society promotes freedom of thought and expression, personal responsibility, individualism, cooperation, and equality of all citizens.

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++


An open society promotes freedom of thought and expression, personal
responsibility, individualism, cooperation, and equality of all citizens.

As such, we expect that our members behave in a way that allows us to achieve
this. Participants in HacSoc events are expected to treat each other with
dignity and respect for each other's perspectives, experiences, and knowledge.
In particular, participants should recognize that people of all skill levels are
welcome, and should always be willing to help others learn.

We want Hacker Society to be a place where people can be comfortable regardless
of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability,
physical appearance, body size, race, age, or religion. As such, we do not
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To support Hacker Society's mission of: learning technology from each other,
building community, and promoting equality, Hacker Society must be a place
where people can be comfortable regardless of gender, gender identity and
expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size,
race, age, or religion. Therefore, we do not tolerate:

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Yeah, this is a bit more grounded. I like it.

tolerate harassment. This includes, but is not limited to:

- Rude or unwelcome comments about a person's gender, gender identity, gender
expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, attire, race,
age or religious expression.
- Sexual images in public spaces
- Deliberate intimidation, stalking, or following
- Harassing photography or recording
- Sustained disruption of talks or other events
- Inappropriate physical contact
- Unwelcome sexual attention
- Advocating for, or encouraging, any of the above behavior

Necessarily, the goal of providing an open atmosphere for discussion and debate
has some tension with the goal of providing a welcoming environment. We expect
that debate and constructive criticism are part of this open atmosphere.
However, when these discussions devolve into attacks against a person and/or
their intrinsic characteristics, we believe that this is unacceptable.
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change to:

Necessarily, the goals of learning, community, and equality are in tension
with the goals individual empowerment, freedom of thought, and freedom of
expression. We strive for politeness and civil discourse but we also strive to
make all welcome. Even those with unpopular ideas or thoughts. However, in
order to foster our community certain limits on free expression must be
observed. We expect that debate and constructive criticism are part of this
open atmosphere. We expect that some members of the community may express
ideas which are not politically correct. We expect that some ideas expressed
by a minority may be deeply unpopular and distasteful to the majority.
However, if these ideas or discussions devolve into attacks against a person
and/or their intrinsic characteristics, we believe that this is unacceptable.

Here is an example of an idea which attacks a non-intrinsic characteristic: I
hate how Pat is so bad at using email he always replies before the quoted
text instead of after. The way Pat uses email is not intrinsic to Pat an may
be violating other established community norms. However, saying: I hate how
Pat always wears yellow shirts so ugly! That is saying something about an
intrinsic to Pat their preference for yellow shirts. The former is allowed the
latter would be viewed as unwelcome. In the same way saying: I love how Pat
always uses vim, is fine but saying: I love how Pat always wears green it is
so hot, is not fine.

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First paragraph ++, it adds a bit more detail that seems valuable. The second paragraph I could take or leave - the examples don't seem (to me) that much more helpful.


Enforcement
-----------

This policy applies at all Hacker Society events and spaces, online and
offline. This includes, but is not limited to:

- Weekly talks
- Open hacks
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in emails, Open Hacks has both words capitalized

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👍

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👍

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updated

- Link-State
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what is the process for changing this doc in the future? Say we rename Link-State to "The Thunderdome" and we start using the Pony Express to communicate instead of Slack?

more general question that I don't care about the answer to, just want to make sure you've thought about an answer to the update process to this doc in the future.

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For sake of documentation, see #23 if you haven't already.

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this sounds like a thing to discuss at the next GB as well

- HackCWRU
- Mailing lists (hackers-discuss, cwru-hackers)
- GitHub organization
- Slack team
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Do we want to claim IRC?

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As long as the current maintainers consent, I don't see why not.

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As the dude in charge of the IRC server right now: I do not consent to this policy being applied to IRC because there is already a notice that the server is under the CWRU Acceptable Use Policy.

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I think that is fine.

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non-change here


The policy applies to attendees as well as any speakers, sponsors, or other
participants in these activities and communication streams. Although we don't
have any direct authority over behavior in our typical spaces such as the
Glennan Student Lounge, we expect that HacSoc participants will adhere to these
guidelines, and we also note that `Case's policies
<https://students.case.edu/handbook/policy/>`_ are always in force.

We expect participants asked to stop any harassing behavior to comply
immediately. If participants do not comply, the Maintainer and HacSoc officers
retain the right to take any actions to keep HacSoc a welcoming environment for
all participants. This includes warning the offender, or removing them from the
event or communication streams they are abusing. This also includes further
measures, such as pursuing University action, should it become necessary.
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who pursues university action? Am I supposed to if someone is harassing me at hacsoc or is HacSoc supposed to? Both?

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I didn't draft this section but from the context it seems that the leadership who asked the person to stop doing something is pursuing university action.

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I did write this. I wanted to include University action as an explicit option for resolving disputes when necessary. I wasn't trying to come up with a rule for who take this action, just explicitly state that University repercussions could happen for poor behavior at HacSoc.

It seems like regardless of who appeals to the university, the person who is being harassed should be able to say whether or not they would like to pursue university action.

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non-change here


Reporting
---------

If someone is making you feel unsafe or unwelcome at HacSoc, please report it as
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Yo... so what if the person making you feel unsafe or unwelcome is an officer?

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this is a really good question. who can they report to in this case? another officer? somewhere anonymous?

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I suggest the department specifically Kim Yurchick as an alternate.

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This is a very good question. Policies I've looked at before have mentioned anonymous reporting options. We don't currently have one set up, but it was something I thought about bringing up. Of course, the problem still remains that even with anonymous reporting, if the anonymous reports go to the officer list, the person you're reporting about still sees the message, and probably is more likely to connect the dots about who is reporting about them. So I guess that leaves another officer.

If anyone has suggested strategies for this, I'd like to hear it.

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Another thing to think about is "What if I am an officer and someone is harassing me", especially if the other person is also an officer.
Probably straight to the department?

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The university has anonymous reporting options. We should refer people to those. For conferences/hackCWRU it is a different matter (but they have their own CoC).

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I think, with Kim's permission, we should list her as an alternative.

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Suggested change:

If you don't feel comfortable reporting a problem to an officer (perhaps because an officer is the problem) consider reporting the problem directly to any of the faculty or staff of the EECS department.

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Can we take that parenthetical and replace it with "for any reason"

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Took the change, removed parenthetical.

soon as possible. At events such as Link-State and HackCWRU, staff can be
identified by their shirts. At other events, you can talk to the officers or
maintainer. And you may always report harassing behavior to officers via email
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maintainer is capitalized somewhere else

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updated

([email protected]) or via private message on Slack.

Other Policies
--------------

As mentioned above, the policies of the `CWRU Handbook
<https://students.case.edu/handbook/policy/>`_ are always applicable at HacSoc
events and in HacSoc gathering spaces. Other policies that we believe apply
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do they apply here or do we believe they apply here?

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they apply

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:)

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I was the one who wrote "we believe they apply". One reason because my writing style was dancing around a bit, which is my bad :/. But the other reason I had to be hesitant was that these ACM and IEEE links aren't codes of conduct per se. They are statements of ethics that are a ton broader than "how do we expect people to behave in HacSoc gatherings." While most of the items in these documents are good things that I agree with, I think the purpose of our document is to lay out expectations for behavior at HacSoc events, not lay out a moral or ethical framework for our members. Also, I haven't taken the time to fully read and digest these policies, and I'm not going to say "these certainly apply" without doing so.

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So let's strike believe

Other policies which apply are:

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done

here are `ACM's
<http://www.acm.org/about-acm/acm-code-of-ethics-and-professional-conduct>`_ and
`IEEE's <http://www.ieee.org/about/ieee_code_of_conduct.pdf>`_, since HacSoc
represents chapters of both organizations.

.. [#hacsoc] In this code of conduct, we're using Hacker Society to refer to
"everything" - the ACM and IEEE chapters as well as the talk series
and mailing lists that are the backbone of our HacSoc community.
1 change: 1 addition & 0 deletions organizational/index.rst
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hacsoc
position_roles
conduct
slack
linkstate
ordering_food
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