The Society of Information Risk Analysis, SiRAcon, and SiRA's Membership Slack form the SiRA Community -- a community dedicated to the craft of risk analysis. The SiRA Community is built around public and private discourse focusing on risk analysis development. While many channels are not focused on risk analysis, all community participants are asked to act as leaders and must comply with the following Code of Conduct. Administrators will enforce this code throughout all channels within the SiRA Membership Slack.
- The SiRA Membership Slack Code of Conduct
Be a leader.
Be respectful of others, ask people to stop if you are bothered; respect privacy; understand this community is primarily not-for-profit, and attempt to resolve issues without Administrators, but if you can't resolve an issue, you can contact the Administrators. If you violate this Code of Conduct, it will be made clear to you, and you may be asked to leave the SiRA Community.
The SiRA Membership Slack is an encouraging community dedicated to developing the craft of risk analysis. The SiRA Membership Slack is an inclusive environment based on treating all individuals respectfully, regardless of gender or gender identity (including transgender status), sexual orientation, age, disability, nationality, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), political affiliation, or career path.
We value respectful behavior above individual opinions.
Respectful behavior includes but is not limited to:
- Be considerate, kind, constructive, and helpful.
- Avoid demeaning, discriminatory, harassing, hateful, or physically threatening behavior, speech, and imagery.
- Due regard for the feelings, wishes, rights, and traditions of others.
If you're unclear if a communication, action, or behavior is respectful, ask someone instead of assuming. No, really. Just ask the Administrators publicly or privately. We'd rather hear from you than hear about something you said or did after the fact, and we are here to help.
Don't be a bystander, be a leader. Role model respectful behavior, but also help to address disrespect when you see it within your community.
The SiRA Membership Slack has a Slackbot that automatically flags non-inclusive words and phrases and makes alternate suggestions.
Have you been on the receiving end of this Slackbot for using some particular term? Don't feel bad - many of us have too! It's not there to draw attention to you personally - it's simply a mechanism we use to gently shape the whole community towards inclusive language and set some norms around how we communicate. Please just take it as intended: a friendly prompt to consider refining how you express yourself.
In partnership with Better Allies, the Rands Leadership Slack decided to share their inclusive language Slackbot rules so that administrators of other Slack communities can copy or modify them. We are using these same rules in the SiRA Membership Slack as well.
For simple instructions on how to download the rules and customize a Slack workspace, please refer to this page.
The Bottom Line: Disrespectful behavior outside this community by active members may be considered a violation of this code of conduct at the administrators' discretion.
Protect 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.
If you want to disclose anything discussed here in a public channel publicly, 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 on public channels, we ask that you ask the originator of the content for permission. If you don't receive consent in a reasonable time, we ask that you credit the "SiRA Membership Slack."
The Bottom Line: Sharing content from private channels is discouraged without permission of the private channel.
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 interpretation and learning from their risk analysis 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 risk analysis 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:
- Read the last couple of days of messages.
- Examine the channel topic 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, and what files have been shared.
The Bottom Line: Posting the same message to multiple channels is spamming. Don't spam.
A direct message ("DM") is a private message to one or more other members. 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?
The Bottom Line: Unsolicited DMs are likely Code of Conduct violations, especially with a commercial flavor.
This community is hyper allergic to unwanted commercial behavior. This is not a place for prominent commercial activities such as recruiting, lead generation, marketing, and other solicitation, except in channels dedicated to that purpose. If you join this community to take value rather than contribute, the community will quickly notice and react.
While apparent commercial behavior is easy to identify, non-obvious commercial behavior is a grey area. In general, if you are wondering if a post is commercially appropriate, our guidelines are that you:
- Ask permission of the channel before posting a message that might be considered commercial, stating clear intent for the post, and,
- Listen to the response of your peers in the channel and act accordingly.
If, after engaging with the community, you are still wondering if a specific message is commercial or not, please ask in one of the channels dedicated to helping find their way in this community, such as #sira-newbies or #coc.
As this community grows, our tolerance for unsolicited commerical behavior decreases.
The Bottom Line:
- Emailing members with unsolicited commercial offers based on information acquired within the community is a Code of Conduct violation.
- Aggressive spamming is cause for automatic account deactivation.
On-topic and relevant commercial activity is allowed in these channels:
- #events
- #fair
- #faircon
- #frameworks
- #jobs
- #research
- #shameless-plugs
- #social-profiles
- #tools-apps-software
Some geographically-focused channels have a higher tolerance for specific kinds of commercial activity focused on events based in that region. Again, read the room. If you'd like to request approval for a channel to be listed as commercial, please contact the Adminstrators.
The Bottom Lines:
- In channels where commercial activity is allowed, it is just as unwelcome to post an unrelated commercial offering as it is to post in non-commercial channels.
- Commercial requests via direct messages ("DM") without prior and apparent consent from the receiver are prohibited.
- If you feel a message should be deleted, please refer to our overview of Deleting Content.
We've received many requests to run surveys in specific channels. Members interested in surveying a channel must clearly state in the channel they intend to survey:
- The goal of the survey
- How the data will be used
- When and how will the results be shared with the channel
The Bottom Line: Surveys posted without considering the above guidelines are considered a Code of Conduct violation.
A troll is a member who starts flame wars or intentionally upsets other members by posting inflammatory, digressive, extraneous, or off-topic messages to provoke 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 SiRA Slack has a zero-tolerance policy where:
- A message which is perceived and 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 SiRA Slack. Trolling which does not meet this high bar is managed via the usual content review process.
The Bottom Lines:
- Admins may delete messages that violate the Code of Conduct.
- In non-trolling cases, the authors of those messages will be notified and may be given a chance to modify the message themselves.
Admins may come across or be notified of SiRA Slack content violating 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 unfuSiRA Slack).
Ideally, another SiRA 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. Suppose Administrator action is desired due to lack of response or any other reason. In that case, an Administrator will notify the original poster of the violation and the need to reword 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.
The determination of how much time is allowed is up to the Administrator, but the following context will be used to help determine the time before the Administrator’s 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
As a risk analysis community, we believe peer-to-peer discussions, feedback, and corrections can help build a stronger, safer, more informed, and more welcoming community.
If you see someone violating any part of this Code of Conduct, we urge you to respectfully dissuade them from such behavior using specifics from this document as guidelines. Expect that others in the community wish to help keep the community respectful and welcome your input.
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. 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 leaders.
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 SiRA Membership 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.
Administrators serve two years terms with an option for a second term.
The Board members and volunteer administrators of SiRA (as of Jun 2024):
- Lisa Young - President
- Jim Lipkis - Vice President
- Darrell Waurio - Secretary
- Joseph Breen - Treasurer
- John Hoffoss - Director At-large - Technology
- Caleb Juhnke - Director At-large - Sponsorship
- Chad Weinman - Director At-large - Membership
- Taylor Lenzen - Director At-large - SiRAcon
- Nick Bakewell - Director At-large
- Tim Wynkoop - Director At-large
You can contact them directly, via @slack-admins, or post your questions or concerns in the #coc channel.
As part of the role, Administrators have information not available to all users. This information includes:
- A member provides email addresses 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 cannot access private channels unless they are members of that channel.
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. Usage of this information unrelated to administrator work is forbidden and will be treated as a Code of Conduct violation.
Thank you to every SiRA Membership Slack community member for helping make our home the respectful and inclusive community it is.
Thanks to Tantek Çelik and the other organizers of IndieWebCamp for creating and sharing the Code of Conduct on which this one was initially based. If you question the need for a Code of Conduct, please see this.
This current version of our COC was rebased to V4.1 of the Rands Leadership Slack Code of Conduct, which was published on August 6, 2022. You can see all prior versions of this parent artifact here.
This Code of Conduct is released under the CC0 public domain license.