Code of Conduct
This Code of Conduct was developed to provide guidance and expectations for behaviour within the AI/ML Community of Practice. It is applicable to all communications sent and received under the auspices of the AI/ML community, including during discussions on the Scholars Portal Mattermost server, and AI/ML events, both in-person and remote.
Expected Behaviour
The following behaviors are expected and requested of everyone in the AI/ML Community of Practice.
Be considerate
Strive to collaborate and listen closely to others’ perspectives and ideas before advancing your own. Express gratitude for others’ contributions and strive to make everyone feel valued, welcome, and heard. Assume good intentions from everyone in our community, and work to clarify misunderstandings as they arise.
Be respectful
We are a community of professionals, and we conduct ourselves professionally. Be kind to others. Do not insult or put down other participants. It’s important to remember that a community where people feel uncomfortable or threatened is not a productive one.
Take responsibility for your impact and your mistakes – if someone says they have been harmed through your words or actions, listen carefully, apologize sincerely, and correct the behavior going forward.
Be inclusive
Our community is national and is made stronger by a diversity of backgrounds, experiences, languages, and cultures. Be respectful of people with different cultural practices, attitudes and beliefs. Remember that you may not be communicating in someone else’s first language, and everyone comes with different areas of expertise and varying degrees of technical knowledge.
Use gender-neutral terms available in your language, such as using they / them to refer to a person whose gender pronouns you do not know. If someone has identified a preferred gender pronoun (e.g., she or her), please use it.
Behaviour That Will Not be Tolerated
The following actions are considered a violation of this Code of Conduct. If you see or experience these behaviours, please report them following the instructions below.
Violence
Violence and threats of violence will not be tolerated. This includes encouraging a person to self-harm, verbal abuse, or any aggressive behaviour that makes someone feel unsafe.
Hurtful or harmful language
It is unacceptable to use derogatory words about a person’s attributes or lifestyle, including the following:
- Ability
- Age
- Background
- Gender and gender identity or expression
- Geographic location
- Marital status and/or Family status
- National origin and/or Citizenship
- Language and/or accent
- Physical and mental health
- Physical appearance
- Race and/or ethnicity
- Religion
- Sexual orientation
- Socioeconomic status
If you are unsure if a word is derogatory, don’t use it.
Personal attacks
Personal attacks or insults about a person’s opinions, beliefs, or culture are not acceptable.
Unwelcome sexual or disruptive attention
This includes the following:
- Sexualized comments, jokes, or imagery
- Inappropriate sexual advances
- Continued unwelcome communication or interaction
Sharing private information about a person without their consent
If a person shares private information with you about their identity or background, you should not share it publicly. This includes publishing private communication.
General Posting Guidelines
Spam
Spamming is prohibited in this space. Spam includes, but is not limited to, the following:
- Excessive off-topic threads
- Messages without content, with nonsensical content, or with links to unrelated content
- Flooding the environment with repetitive messages
- Inciting CoP wars
- Fraudulent activity
Advertising
Advertisements are not appropriate on the CoP. This includes, but is not limited to, announcements of products, services, and free trials by those who stand to gain from such announcements.
Announcements of conferences, workshops, new publications, and position openings appropriate to the topic of the CoP are allowed.
If a large percentage of your posts include a mention of your product or website, your posts will be removed.
Privacy
You may not post any form of personal information of a user unless the user has first permitted it by express consent. Examples of real life information include name, address, IP addresses, and phone numbers.
Do not share any information that could compromise the security of your site or the privacy of your users.
Questions and Feedback
If you have questions about anything in this Code of Conduct, including what certain words or concepts mean, please ask a moderator. We are happy to explain. We also welcome feedback on how to improve the Code of Conduct. Please contact us with any questions or feedback.
Addressing an Incident
Anyone who participates in the AI/ML Community of Practice can report an incident. The incident can be one that affects you or another AI/ML Community of Practice member.
If the incident is minor and you think the person just needs to be made aware of our community guidelines, you can point out the issue and refer the person to the Code of Conduct. However, if it is a more serious incident, if the incident escalates, or if you do not feel comfortable addressing it yourself, the incident should be reported directly to an AI/ML CoP moderator, via email or direct message. A person implicated in an incident report will not be involved in responding to the report.
We will protect the privacy and confidentiality of the person who makes the report. We will usually protect the privacy and confidentiality of those involved in the incident. However, we may publicly name a person about whom we have a complaint or privately warn third parties about them, if we believe that doing so will increase the safety of AI/ML Community of Practice participants or the general public. You may report an incident anonymously if you do not feel comfortable disclosing your name. However, please note that this may limit our ability to fully respond to the incident. If you do include your name and contact information, we may follow up with you for further information or to communicate actions that have been taken as a result of your report.
Consequences
Reports will be promptly and thoroughly investigated. Appropriate measures will be taken to address the situation.
If we ask someone to stop any behavior that violates this Code, they are expected to stop immediately. Online content that has been identified as in violation of this Code may be deleted by moderators or flagged for deletion.
Violation of these guidelines can result in you being asked to leave the AI/ML CoP environment, either temporarily or in perpetuity.
License and attribution
This code of conduct has been adapted with modifications from PKP’s Community Code of Conduct and Forum Guidelines, which have in turn been adapted from Mozilla’s Community Participation Guidelines, the Creative Commons Code of Conduct, and the GitHub Citizen Code of Conduct, used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license; and Geek Feminism and Double Union Code of Conduct, used under CC0.