A code of conduct is designed to be a framework and a guide to, as the Recurse Center eloquently phrased it, "help all of us build a pleasant, productive, and fearless community." The purpose of a code of conduct is not to burden an organization with a bunch of needless rules, to provide a punishment mechanism, or to correct things that have been problems in the past.
The organizers of the Elm LA meetup felt that having a code of conduct would better secure a better community for everyone, especially for those who have tried to enter less accomodating commmunities in the past or are memebers of groups that are marginalized.
Social Rules 1
The first rule means you shouldn't act surprised when people say they don't know something. This applies to both technical things ("What?! I can't believe you don't know what the stack is!") and non-technical things ("You don't know who RMS is?!"). Feigning surprise has absolutely no social or educational benefit: When people feign surprise, it's usually to make them feel better about themselves and others feel worse. And even when that's not the intention, it's almost always the effect. As you've probably already guessed, this rule is tightly coupled to our belief in the importance of people feeling comfortable saying "I don't know" and "I don't understand."
A well-actually happens when someone says something that's almost— but not entirely— correct, and you say, "well, actually…" and then give a minor correction. Even in complicated environments where small details and edge-cases can be forgotten, unless they are critical, they should not be interjected. If they are critical to the conversation phrasing can be the difference between a valuable clarification and condescension e.g. instead of “well actually …” a simple change to “don’t forget …” or “it’s easy to forget …”
Subtle -isms, also called microaggressions2, are small things that make others feel uncomfortable, for example, saying "It's so easy my grandmother could do it" is a subtle -ism, as it is both subtly sexist and ageist. The "subtle" in "subtle -isms" means that it's probably not obvious to everyone right away what was wrong with the comment, even people in the group otherwise affected by the comment. And, even though they are subtle, might seem insignificant, and are often unintentional, a steady stream of them compounds to make people in under-represented groups feel less welcome.
Give constructive, not critical feedback3. Feedback is negatively critical when it surfaces something wrong with someone or something they produced, especially without any mention of ways to make their behavior or their product better. Critical feedback on work often looks like "you don't write enough tests" or "your code quality isn't good enough". Personal criticism can be more severe and often looks like "you should be less judgemental" or "you are a burden because you ask too many questions”. Constructive feedback is more about how a person can do better rather than what they are doing wrong. If you want someone to do something better, you should tell them what better looks like. Ask a question to get a discussion rolling, to gain context, and then if you see room for improvement give declarative feedback to that effect. This creates an environment where people understand what success looks like instead of just feeling like they are unsuccessful.
Ask people "Why?" so that you're listening to understand and not listening to form a response.
When teaching someone something new, don't take their keyboard away. This is a common problem, but it happens more often to women. Oftentimes when someone asks a question instead of telling that person the answer, you take away the keyboard and type in the command yourself. Don't do this! It makes it much more difficult to learn and it makes the other person feel stupid and helpless. In general, give people a chance to learn how to do things themselves if they're interested in learning. You may think you're doing a friend a favor by fixing her Apache configuration while she's gone, but if she's trying to learn how to configure Apache, then you're not actually helping her.
If somebody requests that you stop a certain behavior (even if said behavior is not explicitly covered in this document), you are expected to comply immediately. Don't get defensive; even if you didn't intend to offend, accept responsibility, consider apologizing, and work with the other party to fix the situation. A mistake is a chance to learn and/or teach. Use the opportunity to better the community.
Enforcement of the Code of Conduct is essential. If there is no enforcement, then the Code of Conduct becomes a feel-good document without value. Individuals should feel empowered to call out violations publicly or privately. The Code of Conduct Guild is available to help moderate, address concerns, and solve violations. For repeated, more severe, or unresolved violations members should reach out to organizers for resolution.
- These Social Rules are borrowed primarily from Digital Ocean and second hand from the Recurse Center. Both included here for completeness.
- http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Microaggressions
- This point is paraphrased from a larger article called “Criticism and Ineffective Feedback” by Kate Heddleston. The note on keyboards is from HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux