Our goal is to create the best community in Abia State Polytechnic for becoming a better developer, designer, CTOs, founders and CEOs, to learn from industry subject matter experts. We want every member of the ICA community to be able to focus their full attention on becoming a better them, both in campus and as a part of our community. This is impossible to do if you are being harassed, stalked, or discriminated against.
This Code of Conduct is designed to help all of us build a pleasant, productive, and fearless community. The purpose of the Code of Conduct is not to burden the members with a bunch of needless rules, or to give us a punishment mechanism for people "being bad," or even to correct things that have been wrong in the past. We are striving to make our community a great group of people to work with, especially for those people who have faced more adverse working environments in the past.
The following types of behavior are unacceptable at ICA, both online and in-person, and constitute code of conduct violations.
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Harassment—including offensive verbal comments related to gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion, as well as sexual images in public spaces, deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual or romantic attention.
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Threats—threatening someone physically or verbally. For example, threatening to publicize sensitive information about someone’s personal life.
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No feigning surprise - This 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."
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Blatant -isms — Saying things that are explicitly racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. For example, arguing that some people are less intelligent because of their gender, race or religion. Subtle -isms and small mistakes made in conversation are not code of conduct violations. However, repeating something after it has been pointed out to you that you broke a social rule, or antagonizing or arguing with someone who has pointed out your subtle -ism is considered unwelcoming behavior, and is not allowed at ICA.
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No condescending well-actually’s - 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 …”
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No back-seat driving - If you overhear people working through a problem, you shouldn't intermittently lob advice across the room. This can lead to the "too many cooks" problem, but more important, it can be rude and disruptive to half-participate in a conversation. This is particularly true in a distributed environment involving conversations in Slack or WhatsApp. The occasional interjection to an on-going conversation, particularly based on backscroll, can be very disruptive. This isn't to say you shouldn't help, offer advice, or join conversations. On the contrary, we encourage all those things. Rather, it just means that when you want to help out or work with others, you should fully engage and not just interject sporadically.
We've categorized unacceptable behavior into abuse and unwelcoming behavior in the section above.
If we witness or receive a report about abusive behavior, we will contact the perpetrator to have a conversation with them and verify what has transpired, and they will be removed from the ICA community, and they will not be welcome in the physical ICA events.
If we witness or receive a report about unwelcoming behavior, we will contact the persons involved to explain why their behavior was unacceptable, and warn them that a second code of conduct violation will result in us removing them from the ICA community.
If you see a violation of our code of conduct, please report it to the community at icaabiapoly@gmail.com. or to any lead in the community slack channels.
In your report, please include:
- Your Name
- A detailed description of what happened
- Where and when the incident happened
- Any other relevant context
- If/how you've already responded - this lets us know the current state of the situation
Additionally, community leads are available to help community members engage with local law enforcement or to otherwise help those experiencing unacceptable behavior feel safe.
We will keep all reports confidential, except if we've discussed with you and agreed otherwise. When we discuss incidents with people who are reported, we will anonymize details as much as we can to protect reporter privacy.
We expect all community participants (members, contributors, Open source maintainers, sponsors and other guests) to abide by this Code of Conduct in all community venues--online and in-person--as well as in all one-on-one communications pertaining to community matters.
This code of conduct and its related procedures also applies to unacceptable behavior occurring outside the scope of community activities when such behavior has the potential to adversely affect the safety and well-being of community members.
We arrived at these policies by a combination of:
- Considering Ingressive Campus aims and objectives
- Reading the codes of conduct of other organizations we find to be thoughtful
NB: This document is subject to refinement and expansion in the future