The Mac Admins Slack Workspace (or just "Mac Admins Slack") is a global online community of people who manage Apple devices and services at large and small scales. The community is built around public and private channels focusing on managing Apple devices and services. While many channels are not focused specifically on managing Apple devices and services, all community participants are asked to act professionally, and must comply with the following Code of Conduct ("CoC").
All principles in this CoC are important and enforceable. The Mac Admins Slack Administrators ("we") are here primarily to help you, and also to enforce the CoC throughout all channels within the Mac Admins Slack.
If you encounter anything concerning, report it to an Administrator. We will handle all reports with discretion.
The Mac Admins Slack is available as a means of collaboration for Apple device administrators, enthusiasts, and developers to interact with one another. It is meant to provide a safe, friendly and inclusive community alongside other already well-established user forums, groups, and mailing lists, to help facilitate more real-time collaboration when possible.
We hope that you find the community to be enriching to your personal and professional lives, and above all else a place of camaraderie where our collective knowledge and differences are celebrated in a positive, welcoming environment.
Thank you for following this Code of Conduct. We reserve the right to amend or change the CoC at any time, and encourage you to periodically review these guidelines to ensure a safe environment for all.
- The Mac Admins Slack Administrators
- Introduction
- Summary
- Protected Characteristics
- 1. Respect
- 2. Harassment-free
- 3. Privacy
- 4. Read the Room
- 5. Don't Be a Troll
- 6. Don't Spam
- 7. Be Real
- 8. Direct Message Etiquette
- 9. Private Channels
- 10. Content Review Process
- 11. Resolve Peacefully
- 12. Reporting Incidents
- 13. Incident Process
- 14. Recusement of Administrators party to an issue
- 15. Press & Media Guidelines
- 16. Vendor Guidelines
- 17. Administrator Information Access
- 18. Opinions of the Administrators
- 19. Contacting the Mac Admins Foundation Board
- Become an Administrator
- Contributions and Modifications to the Code of Conduct
All are welcome to participate in the Mac Admins Slack as long as the tenets of this Code of Conduct are adhered to. All community members are expected to:
- Be a valuable positive contributor to this community.
- Be respectful of other peoples' rights, ideas, and opinions.
- Treat others fairly, with dignity and respect, regardless of their gender or gender identity (including transgender status), sexual orientation, age, disability, race, ethnicity, colour, nationality, religion (or lack thereof), beliefs, language or language skills, job title, political affiliation, or any other protected characteristic.
- Ask people to stop if you are bothered.
- Respect privacy.
- Understand that this community is moderated voluntarily, and attempt to resolve issues without Administrators, but if you can't resolve an issue, you can contact the Administrators.
There are additional Vendor Guidelines and Press & Media Guidelines.
We expect participants to follow the Code of Conduct in all public and private channels (including direct messages).
If you violate the Code of Conduct, it will be made clear to you. We operate a strike system which are recorded internally, and you may be asked to leave the Mac Admins Slack Workspace for persistent or serious offences, but this will be a last resort.
Everyone is welcome to participate, and no judgement will be made on members of the greater Mac community who are not a part of the community.
Protected characteristics are referred to throughout this document. These include, but may not be limited to, the following:
- Gender or gender identity (including transgender status)
- Sexual orientation
- Age
- Disability
- Body size, shape, appearance
- Race
- Ethnicity
- Colour
- Nationality
- Religion (or lack thereof)
- Beliefs
- Language
- Language skills (e.g. level of English)
- Job title / career path
- Political affiliation
The Mac Admins Slack is an inclusive environment based on treating all individuals respectfully, regardless of any characteristics.
We value respectful behaviour above individual opinions.
Respectful behavior means adhering to standards including, but not limited to, the following:
- Be considerate, kind, constructive, and helpful.
- Avoid demeaning, discriminatory, harassing, trolling, hateful, or physically threatening behavior, speech, and imagery.
- Give due regard for the feelings, wishes, rights, and traditions of others.
- Be aware that English is not everyone's first language, and therefore people may not be able to convey their thoughts and questions in the same ways.
If you're unclear whether a communication, action, or behavior is respectful, ask someone instead of assuming. Ask the Administrators publicly via the #ask-about-this-slack channel or contact one of them privately via Direct Message. We'd rather hear from you than hear about something you said or did after the fact, and we are here to help.
Be a role model when it comes to respectful behavior, but also help to address disrespect when you see it within the community. Do not take the bait of disrepectful or trolling behaviour by engaging in an argument - report any disrespectful behaviour to the Administrators and we will deal with it privately.
Be aware that disrespectful behavior by active members towards others outside this community can also be considered a violation of this code of conduct.
The Mac Admins Slack is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of any characteristics.
We do not tolerate harassment of Slack participants in any form. Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any venue. If somebody reports that they are feeling harassed by you in any way, do not dismiss them or try to contest it - leave them alone. Slack participants violating these rules may be sanctioned or expelled from the Mac Admins Slack at the discretion of the Administrators.
Harassment includes, but is not limited to:
- Offensive and/or unwelcome comments related to any [protected characteristic](#Protected Characteristics).
- Sexual images in public spaces
- Deliberate intimidation, stalking, or following
- Harassing photography or recording
- Sustained disruption of talks or other events
- Physical contact and simulated physical contact (e.g. textual descriptions like "hug" or "backrub") without consent or after a request to stop
- Unwelcome sexual attention, including gratuitous or off-topic sexual images or behaviour
- Hate speech
- Purposeful psychological manipulation of any kind
- Spamming of GIFs
- Weighing in on to an existing dispute, including gratuitous use of an emoji that triggers an action, such as the 🚚 (truck) emoji which may have been assigned as a reminder of the purpose of certain channels
- Advocating for, or encouraging, any of the above behaviour
- Direct messages or postings in channels/private groups of an overly sales/advertising/spam manner (see also additional Vendor Guidelines and Press & Media Guidelines).
Protect intellectual property ("IP") and legally-protected information. This community is not a public space. However, no one has signed a non-disclosure agreement ("NDA") to participate, and you should not presume anything you say here will remain private, so act accordingly.
You must not reveal personally identifying information ("PII") about any member of this Slack Workspace without the member's consent, even if this information is publicly available elsewhere. This includes, but is not limited to:
- Home address
- Home or mobile telephone number
- Workplace address or telephone number
- Identities of family members
- Relationships
- Employer, if it is not stated in their Profile
- Real name, if it is not stated in their username or Profile
- Gender/identity or other characteristic, if it is not stated in their username or Profile
- Salary
If you want to publicly disclose anything discussed in a public channel of this Slack Workspace, use the Chatham House Rule as the guideline:
"Participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed."
For attribution of specific content found on this Slack in public channels, we ask that request permission from the originator of that content. If you don't receive consent in a reasonable time, we ask that you credit the "Mac Admins Slack".
Sharing content from private channels is not allowed without specific agreement from the author of that content.
Once onboard, you will likely find yourself in a popular channel with many members who sound like we've figured it out. We haven't. While advice on one channel might read definitive, it is one member's lessons, interpretations and learnings from their Mac Admin experience. While there is a diverse set of experiences within this community, we continue to learn at every level of expertise. The daily practice of being a Mac Admin is more art than science.
This is a large community with many different humans populating hundreds of channels. Different channels have organically developed distinct personalities. Before posting in a channel with hundreds of members, we suggest you take the time to read the room. Specifically:
- Scroll up. Read the last few conversations.
- Examine the channel topic, description, and any channel canvas, for helpful tips.
- Click on the channel details and read the "about" section to see how many members are present, what messages have already been pinned or bookmarked, and what files have been shared.
- Use Slack's search feature. Your question has problably already been discussed, or a least something similar. The results might give you the answer or help you frame your question better.
A troll is a member who starts flame wars or intentionally upsets other members by posting inflammatory and digressive, extraneous, or off-topic messages with the intent of provoking members into displaying emotional responses and normalizing tangential discussion, either for the troll's amusement or a specific gain.
The determination of whether a message is trolling is often a subjective assessment by Administrators, but there is a specific situation where The Mac Admins Slack has a zero-tolerance policy where all of the following are met:
- A message which is perceived and/or reported as trolling,
- Is posted by a non-contributing member with little to no other engagement elsewhere in the Slack, and,
- Is posted via a deliberately fake account.
Content posted in this fashion results in a no-warning expulsion of the offending account from The Mac Admins Slack. Trolling which does not meet this high bar is managed via the usual content review process.
Posting the same message to multiple channels is considered spamming and is not allowed.
See also the additional Vendor guidelines.
It is forbidden to impersonate an individual, or pretend to represent a company.
As a member of a company, is is strictly not allowed to impersonate a customer or potential customer for the purposes of promotion. Violations of this nature will be treated very seriously and may have consequences for the accounts of other members of your company.
A direct message ("DM") is a private message to one or more other members. Administators have no standing access to these messages and have no ability to delete them, but the CoC still applies to this content, as does the Content Review Process.
Note: See 15. Administrator Information Access for details on how the Slack Workspace Owner account can potentially be used to request access to DMs in the event of a serious issue.
Sending a DM to another member you don't know might be jarring for the receiver. Before sending a DM to a member you've never contacted, consider the following:
- Is it obvious to the other member why I am contacting them privately? If not, should I provide context, such as a public post?
- Could this message be considered unsolicited spam? If so, should you be sending it?
Unsolicited DMs are likely to be Code of Conduct violations, especially with a commercial flavor. To avoid this:
- If you are contacting somebody because you consider them to be an expert in something you need help on, first look for a channel that is relevant to that thing. Many vendors, maintainers of open source software and tools, and experts in specific topics, have created a channel for the thing you're trying to learn about. If you don't find a specific channel, try to find a more generic channel that is still somewhat relevant, and ask in there. Somebody will probably point you to the specific channel if it exists and you failed to find it yourself. If you really can't think of a relevant channel, ask for help in finding the relevant channel in the #ask-about-this-slack channel.
- If you want to contact somebody specific due to something personal, such as that you met them at a conference and want to continue a conversation you had, ideally you would ask them during that conversation if it's OK to contact them later via Slack, but if you didn't do that, make sure that you keep it to a single message, ask if it's OK to continue the conversation, and do not expect a response. If they don't respond, respect that and leave it alone.
- If you are a vendor, see the additional Vendor guidelines.
- If you are a member of the press, see the additional Press & Media Guidelines.
It is allowed to create private channels. All aspects of the Code of Conduct apply equally in private channels as they do in public channels. Only channel managers and workspace admins, or members themselves, can remove members from private channels. The creator of a private channel is a channel manager, and they can appoint new members to be channel managers.
The Administrators have no access to private channels unless they are invited to join them. The Administrators can not see a list of private channels. Only the Workspace Owner (the MAF Board) can do this. Administrators may request to see this list if the board agrees.
Technically, any member of a private channel can invite new members into the channel. However, private channels may have agreed upon rules for adding new members, and these should be adhered to. Controlling admission to private channels is up to the existing members of the channel, within the boundaries set by the CoC and Vendor Guidelines.
The Administrators may come across or be notified of content within or relating to the Mac Admins Slack Workspace that violates the Code of Conduct. In some situations, this may lead to an Administrator deleting the message (or messages) that violate the CoC. Messages most likely to be deleted are commercial solicitations, disrespectful messages to other members, or links to disturbing or distressing content without appropriate measures to warn of or hide the content (including image uploads and unfurls).
Ideally, another Mac Admins Slack member notices this content and contacts the original poster, who then modifies or deletes the message so that it is no longer problematic. In this case, no further Administrator action is required. The Mac Admins Slack allows members to edit messages up to 30 mins after posting. If 30 mins have elapsed, an Administrator can delete the message if requested
If Administrator action is desired, due to lack of response or any other reason, an Administrator will notify the original poster of the violation and the need to reword (if within the 30 min edit window) or remove the problematic message. The Administrator will also specify a time after which Administrator action will be taken to delete the content if it is not addressed. This time may be as little as a few minutes, or as much as 24 hours. In extreme cases we may have to delete first and notify after.
The determination of how much time is allowed is up to the acting Administrator, but the following context will be used to help determine the time before Administrator action:
- How blatant the violation is
- How likely it is to be seen by others (higher-volume channels get less time)
- How likely it is to trigger negative reactions in others
Additional consequences beyond the removal of content are up to the acting Administrator, per the same incident process found in the Incident Process
Administators have no access to these messages and have no ability to delete them, however, violations should be addressed with Administators via the Incident Process.
As a large online community, we believe that peer-to-peer discussions, feedback, and corrections can help build a stronger, safer, more informed, and more welcoming community.
If you see someone clearly violating any part of this Code of Conduct, you may wish to inform them of that. We would urge you to limit this intervention to respectfully pointing them at the specific part of the CoC of which they are in violation. Do not give your own opinion beyond the CoC, do not try to interpret the CoC if it is ambiguous to you, and do not engage directly at all if you are not sure. Contact an Administrator and we will take it from there. Expect that others in the community wish to help keep the community respectful and welcome your input. However, if one person has already pointed out a CoC violation, do not add further comments, and do not engage in an argument about it. If in doubt, contact an Administrator.
If you experience disrespectful behavior toward yourself or anyone else and feel unable or unwilling to respond or resolve it respectfully (for any reason), please immediately bring it to the attention of an Administrator. We want to hear from you about anything that you feel is disrespectful, threatening, or just something that could make someone feel distressed or uncomfortable. We will listen and work to resolve the matter with your help promptly.
Should you catch yourself behaving disrespectfully, or be confronted as such, listen intently, own up to your words and actions, and apologize accordingly. No one is perfect, and even well-intentioned people make mistakes. How you handle them and avoid repeating them in future matters. We are here to learn as professionals.
If you feel that you are being harassed and you feel comfortable speaking with the offender, please inform the offender that they have affected you negatively. Often, the offending behavior is unintentional, and the accidental offender and offended will resolve the incident by having that initial discussion. As a world-wide community, we recognize that there are inherent language barriers we must work together to overcome.
The Mac Admins Slack Workspace Administrators recognize that there are many reasons speaking directly to the offender may not be workable for you (all reasons are valid, we will never ask you to explain nor defend your reasons). If you don't feel comfortable speaking directly with the offender for any reason, please report violations directly to a member of the Administrators.
If you cannot resolve a situation peacefully, please refer to our Incident Process and choose a course of action that suits the situation.
Suppose the Administrators determine that a member is violating any part of this Code of Conduct. In that case, they may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion and exclusion from the Mac Admins Slack.
As Administrators, we will seek to resolve conflicts peacefully and in a manner that is positive for the community. This Code of Conduct documents everyday situations we've seen, but we can't foresee every situation. If in the Administrator's judgment, the best thing to do is to ask a disrespectful individual to leave, we will do so.
If a party to a dispute is also a member of the Administrators team, that person will be recused from any role in the dispute resolution process except as a party, forfeiting any involvement in any enforcement and resolution process. It is the responsibility of that person to immediately inform the Administrators of the conflict. The only way a conflict of interest is applicable is when a person involved in the mediation/resolution process is also involved in the conflict. As members, we are entrusted to make decisions in the best interest of the community and set aside personal interest for the best interest of our community as a whole.
If you are a reporter or a member of the press, there are additional guidelines to which you must conform:
- You must show that you are a reporter or a member of the press in your Slack profile. Documentation on how to do that is available in the link: Edit Your Profile
- If you want to interview someone about something, you need to ask permission to interview them first, and inform them about where their comments may end up being published prior to the start of the interview.
See the additional Vendor Guidelines
If you have concerns regarding this Slack, please feel free to post in contact any of the Administrators and we will work to understand and address them respectfully and with an appropriate level of privacy in the given situation.
As part of the role, Administrators have access to information not available to regular users. This information includes:
- Member email addresses, which are provided as part of our sign-up process.
- Information contained within member requests to join the community. This might include email, name, and occupation.
- Access log information provided by the Slack administrator interface. This includes name, login times, login device, and IP.
Administrators do not have standing access to private channels unless they are members of that channel.
The Slack Workspace Owner account is accessible only by members of the Mac Admins Foundation Board. This account has additional tools (such as export and migration tools) that may provide access to private channels and DMs. As per the privacy section above, you should not presume anything you say here will remain private, so act accordingly.
As part of Code of Conduct investigations, Administrators may choose to access this information. Administrators may also request information from private channels from current channel members to investigate a Code of Conduct violation.
Administrators may use the above information as part of a Code of Conduct investigation. Use of this information for any reason unrelated to administrator work is forbidden and will be treated as a Code of Conduct violation.
The Mac Admins Slack Administrators are here to ensure that the community runs within the spirit and guidelines of the Code Of Conduct, and to manage the technical aspects of keeping the Mac Admins Slack instance running. We are also members, and fellow Mac Admins, so when it comes to products, how to do things, why to do things etc., please take our input only as fellow Mac Admins and not as a representative of the Administrators.
On all subjects, other than running of the Mac Admins Slack and the CoC, the Administrators' opinions are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the rest of Mac Admins Slack Administrators or the Mac Admins community.
The members of the Mac Admins Foundation Board are not Administrators, unless they have chosen to also be an Administrator. As such, they should not be contacted by DM in regard to any matters relating to violations of the Code of Conduct, or for any reason that would be considered in violation of the Code of Conduct for any other member of this Slack Workspace.
If you have an issue that you feel is relevant to the Board rather than Administrators, which cannot be discussed publicly in the #macadminsfoundation channel, use the Macadmins.org Contact Form.
New administrators are chosen by existing and outgoing administrators. We try to cover global time zones so that any issues can be dealt with without delay. We welcome recommendations, particularly in time zones beyond the US, and those with non-English language skills.
Current List of Administrators
Anyone may recommend modifications to this Code of Conduct by opening a pull request. Click here to access the Pull Request page. The request will be reviewed by the Administrator team before being approved. We will then also seek the approval of the Mac Admins Foundation Board.
This Code of Conduct is released under the CC0 public domain license.
V3.0 of this Code of Conduct was published September, 2025. You can see all prior versions of this artifact in the commit history.