Welcome!

The NI Tech and Design Slack (or NI Tech Slack) is a gathering of people working in the tech and design fields with an association to Northern Ireland. The group is not restricted to people who work in these fields, or who live in Northern Ireland.

The current admins are:

  • Andrew Bolster (@bolster)
  • Claire Wilgar (@clairebones)
  • Mark Allan (@MarkXA)
  • Maurice Kelly (@mo)
  • Victoria McCallum (@victoria)

We want this to be a fun, pleasant, and harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion. We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form. Participants asked to stop any harassing behaviour are expected to comply immediately.

Confidentiality:

Please respect the confidentiality of what is said in the NI Tech Slack. The Slack is open to all who wish to join, but the messages posted are only visible to those who join. Members have a right to expect that their postings are not replicated widely without their approval, especially those messages posted in private channels or direct messages. Please don’t repeat or quote things said here without the affirmative consent of the member(s).

Please be mindful that things you say here may at some point become public. Notwithstanding the above, we cannot guarantee that messages posted will not be seen be non-members, nor by people who become members in the future. Please exercise caution and refrain from sharing sensitive information that could harm you or others if it became public.

Message Retention:

Because this is a free slack account, the ability to scroll back is limited, but Slack–the company–retains complete logs of all channels and direct messages back to the creation of the NI Tech Slack. Slack is a U.S. company and therefore subject to subpoenas from U.S. courts. Our logs may be subject to subpoena and could become public as part of legal proceedings.

Harassment:

Harassment includes, but is not limited to:

  • Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, age, race, religion or political opinion
  • Promotion of abuse, exclusion or harassment based on the characteristics above, like links or tweets to publicity-raising or controversy pieces accepting racist, sexist or homophobic groups
  • Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment.
  • Deliberate misgendering or use of ‘dead’ or rejected names
  • Gratuitous or off-topic sexual images or behaviour in spaces where they’re not appropriate
  • Simulated physical contact (e.g. textual descriptions like “*hug*” or “*backrub*”) without consent or after a request to stop.
  • Threats of violence
  • Incitement of violence towards any individual, including encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in self-harm
  • Deliberate intimidation
  • Sustained disruption of discussion
  • Unwelcome sexual attention
  • Continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease
  • Publication of non-harassing private communication
  • Supporting nature-based (or similar, non-social) explanations for professional inequalities, wage gaps, or the experience of inequal treatment (either as an individual or as a group)
  • “Doxxing” - the publication of personal identifying information or photos of a Slack member that is otherwise private

Reporting

If you are being harassed, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact the admins. They’ll respond as promptly as they can. Where possible, take screenshots as evidence of harassment and provide these to the admins.

We will respect confidentiality requests for the purpose of protecting victims of abuse.

This code of conduct uses a broader definition of harassment than the legislation which makes harassment illegal in Northern Ireland. If you have been the victim of criminal harassment, you should report it to the police. Please also contact the admins who may be able to assist.

Consequences

Participants asked to stop any harassing behaviour are expected to comply immediately.

If a participant engages in harassing behaviour, the admins may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion from this Slack. At our discretion, we may publicly name a person within the Slack about whom we have taken action, or privately warn third parties about them.

Spam

Within the context of this Slack spam is defined as behaviour that involves the posting of unsolicited adverts, or the posting of excessive amounts of material to any channel or feature of the Slack. Examples of spam include (but are not limited to):

  • repeated advertising of services or products
  • excessive uploads of customisable material (for example: emoji, Slackbot responses, loading messages)
  • joining the service solely to advertise
  • running bots that post excessively or cause annoyance to other members

In the event of an activity considered to be spam being reported to the admins, a request will be made to the member responsible to rectify their actions (by removing messages, emoji, bots, etc) and to not repeat the activity. Failure to rectify the actions within a timely fashion will result in the admins carrying this out. Repeating the activity will result in account deactivation.

Credits and License

This code of conduct is based on Annalee Flower Horne’s Sample Slack Code of Conduct, which is in turn based on Geek Feminism’s Community Anti-Harassment Policy. We have adapted the Sample Slack Code of Conduct for our own use under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.