Northeast Scala Symposium
2023

Code of Conduct

The Northeast Scala Symposium is committed to providing an environment that encourages and empowers its members to teach, learn, and collaborate. We welcome every skill level -- from beginners to experts -- to participate in and advance the Scala community with us. To foster an inclusive, equitable, safe, diverse, and thriving community, should you choose to engage with our community as a participant or speaker, you agree to our Code of Conduct outlined below.

The DEIB Safety Team reserves the right to disallow attendance from participants and speakers with past or current behavior that violates our Code of Conduct. At the conference, anyone acting contrary to our code of conduct will be asked to leave at the discretion of the organizers. We will have dedicated avenues to contact us.

Our Standards

As a member of our community, you agree to the following:

Encouraged

  • Be kind and courteous. We treat our fellow community members with the empathy, respect and dignity all people deserve. Public communication is received by many people you don't know, so before sending a message, please ask yourself whether someone from a different context would misunderstand it.
  • Respect differences of opinion, and remember that every design or implementation choice carries a trade-off and numerous costs. There is seldom a single right answer; we will find the best solutions by engaging in constructive discussion, with everybody bringing their unique viewpoint and experience to the table.
  • Remember that everyone was new to Scala at some point. We want to encourage newcomers to join our community and learn the Scala language and ecosystem. Always assume good intentions and a willingness to learn, just as you are willing to evolve your own opinion as you gain new insights.

Discouraged

  • Aggressive and micro-aggressive behavior, such as unconstructive criticism, providing corrections that do not improve the conversation, repeatedly interrupting or talking over someone else, feigning surprise at someone's lack of knowledge or awareness about a topic, or subtle prejudice (for example, comments like "That's so easy my grandmother could do it."). For more examples of this kind of behavior, see the Recurse Center's user manual.
  • Insulting, demeaning, or harassing anyone in public channels. See examples of unacceptable behavior below. In particular, we don't tolerate behavior that excludes people in socially marginalized groups.
  • Private harassment. No matter who you are, if you feel you have been or are being harassed or made uncomfortable by a community member's behavior, please contact the moderation team immediately.

Examples of Unacceptable Behavior

Behavior that will lead to exclusion includes the following points, inspired by the definition of "Unacceptable Behavior" in the Citizen Code of Conduct:

  • Violence, threats of violence or violent language directed against another person.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  • Posting or displaying sexually explicit or violent material.
  • Posting or threatening to post other people's personally identifying information ("doxing").
  • Personal insults, especially those related to gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, or disability.
  • Inappropriate photography or recording.
  • (For in-person conferences) Inappropriate physical contact. You should have someone's consent before touching them.
  • Unwelcome sexual attention. This includes sexualized comments or jokes; inappropriate touching, groping, and unwelcome sexual advances.
  • Deliberate intimidation, stalking or following (online or in person).
  • Advocating for, or encouraging, any of the above behavior.
  • Sustained disruption of community events such as talks and presentations.

Moderation Process

Below is our process for upholding our community's standards of conduct. If you feel that a thread or situation needs moderation, please contact the DEIB Safety Team.

  • The DEIB Safety Team will warn users who make remarks inconsistent with the above code of conduct.
  • If the warning is unheeded, the user will be "kicked," i.e., removed from the particular NEScala Discord channel or SpatalChat server to cool off.
  • If the user comes back and continues to make trouble, they will be banned, i.e., indefinitely excluded from the entire NEScala Discord and SpatialChat servers.
  • The Safety Team may choose at their discretion to un-ban the user if it was a first offense and if they make suitable amends with the offended party.
  • If you think a Safety Team member's action is unjustified, please communicate with that person, or with a different team member, in private. Complaints about moderation in public channels are not allowed.
  • DEIB Safety Team members are held to a higher standard than other community members. If one of us acts inappropriately, we should expect less leeway than others.

Contact

If you have questions or would like to report a code of conduct concern, please contact the NEScala DEIB Safety Team via
  • our CoC Report Incident Form
  • Discord or SpatialChat by direct messaging individual team members in our Discord or SpatialChat servers if you feel more comfortable this way

We encourage using the Incident Form the most to keep tracking concerns easier. Unlike Discord or SpatialChat, form submissions can be completely anonymous. While we allow anonymous reporting, our ability to follow up and action anonymous reports will be limited.

DEIB Safety Team

The Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Safety Team is here to help make NEScala an enjoyable and welcoming experience for everyone in our community.

2023 Members

Team Discord handles: @DEIB Safety

  • Jasna Rodulfa-Blemberg @jasna
  • Allyson @Allyson
  • Justin du Coeur @jducoeur

Domain

The policies listed above apply to all official NEScala channels:

  • mailing lists
  • GitHub repositories
  • chat systems (Discord, SpatialChat servers) under the NEScala organization

Credits

Derived from the Scala Code of Conduct as published on scala-lang.org and Typelevel.org. Adapted from and/or inspired by multiple successful Codes of Conduct, including:

License

This Code of Conduct is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.