Welcome to Ladies Storm Hackathons! This group is of, by, and for the amazing, still growing, community that hackathons have built. We're glad you're here.
Ladies Storm Hackathons (LSH) is a community. Whenever you post or reply, there are other people sitting behind the screen reading what you say. These other people have thoughts, ideas, dreams, aspirations, troubles, advice, perspectives, feelings, and experiences, just like you. You'll probably end up meeting a lot of them if you go to hackathons. Everyone in this group is a potential new friend—treat them that way.
This document aims to make LSH a place for everyone to feel welcome. The rules, guidelines, and code of conduct that follow apply to all LSH Groups (including those location or demographic-specific).
Hackers are diverse and complex, with many different interests and passions. These rules are in place so that everyone can feel comfortable participating in LSH. If you think they need editing or don't cover something important, please send a pull request to start the discussion.
Our guiding principle can be summarized in one 90's-era sentence: "Be excellent to each other."
These are the rules/the things this space is not for. We tried to keep them short, with more indepth explanations in the appendix. Breaking any of these will result in your prompt removal from LSH.
- No harassment, including personal attacks.
- No spam. If Gmail wouldn't put it in my inbox, it shouldn't be in LSH. This includes doing attention-catching things like writing in all caps, using linkbait headlines, or otherwise editing the post or preview to pop out at the cost of other posts.
- No telling people they or their post is not welcome in Ladies Storm Hackathons. If you think a post does not belong in LSH, report the post or message an admin. If you make other people feel unwelcome in LSH, we will remove you from the group.
Ladies Storm Hackathons is a tech community for people who want to help close the gender gap.
We encourage everyone to participate and are committed to building a community for all. Although we will fail at times, we seek to treat everyone both as fairly and equally as possible. Whenever a participant has made a mistake, we expect them to take responsibility for it.
Although this list cannot be exhaustive, we explicitly honor diversity in age, gender, gender identity or expression, culture, ethnicity, language, national origin, political beliefs, profession, race, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and technical ability. We will not tolerate discrimination based on any of the protected characteristics above, including participants with disabilities. There is no one true hacker.
Our community prioritizes marginalized people's safe existence in the community. We will not tolerate posts encouraging:
- Insensitivity toward boundary statements, such as "leave me alone," "go away," or "I'm not discussing this with you"
- Racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behaviors or assumptions
However, if you have a post that falls in the above categories yet you feel still belongs in LSH, you can message a moderator to discuss it. We've had posts like these in the past that turned into constructive discussions with a bit of reframing. Talking about hard problems is, itself, hard.
If you have an issue with a member or moderator please take it up with the moderators privately via Facebook message to avoid people ganging up or taking sides in an argument in which they are not directly involved. It’s best to contact the moderators on Facebook via private group message so we can discuss the issue with you. We promise that everything will be confidential and we won’t get mad at you if you have a complaint.
Ladies Storm Hackathons is a space where people learn, grow, and communicate together.
Members are aged from middle school to retirement, span across gender identities and races, and hail from six of the seven continents. They’re united by the common love of creating amazing things with technology, usually over the course of a weekend at some college's hackathon. If this sounds like you, come join us!
What should I do if I see someone violating the Code of Conduct?
Report the post. You can report a thread by clicking on the arrow in its top right hand corner. Then, a mod will look into it and take action. If the problem isn't specific to a thread, reach out to one of the LSH moderators directly.
Why is this moderator ignoring me?
Moderators are volunteers with busy lives outside of LSH. They will usually reply to you very promptly or connect you with someone who can, but if a moderator is taking longer to get back to you than you would like, please be patient.
What if I disagree with the moderator who reached out to me?
Feel free to reach out to other moderators, but all mods use the same CoC so we would not expect different results.
Can I contribute and improve this code of conduct?
Contributions are welcome on how to improve this code of conduct! Send us a pull request with your suggestions.
LSH is moderated by a team of volunteers, listed below. If you ever have a question, comment, or concern about another user, or LSH itself, please don't hesitate to reach out to one of them via Facebook Messenger. All questions and concerns will be kept completely confidential.
This Code of Conduct is released under CC-BY-4.0. It is heavily inspired by the Open Code of Conduct, which itself is licensed under CC-BY-4.0. Many of the guidelines are taken from Hackathon Hackers, Nerdfighters of the Greater DC Area, with others borrowed from Hacker News, and Hackers@Berkeley.
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, race, age, regional discrimination, political or religious affiliation
- Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment
- Deliberate misgendering. This includes deadnaming or persistently using a pronoun that does not correctly reflect a person’s gender identity. You must address people by the name they give you when not addressing them by their username or handle
- Inappropriate physical contact and simulated physical contact (eg, textual descriptions like "hug" or "backrub") without consent or after a request to stop
- Threats of violence, both physical and psychological
- Incitement of violence towards any individual, including encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in self-harm
- Deliberate intimidation
- Stalking or following
- Harassing photography or recording, including accessing private online activity for harassment purposes
- Sustained disruption of discussion
- Unwelcome sexual attention, including sexual images or behaviour
- Pattern of inappropriate social contact, such as requesting/assuming inappropriate levels of intimacy with others
- Continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease
- Deliberate "outing" of any aspect of a person’s identity without their consent except as necessary to protect others from intentional abuse
- Publication of private communication without second party consent