Code of Conduct for Internet Australia Fora

Version 1.0 of 09th November 2017

Preamble

This document affirms expectations of participants in all fora run by Internet Australia, including email-lists for members, Committees and Board-members, and all forms of bulletin-board and social media.

Participation in any IA forum represents agreement to comply with the terms of this Code

Serious or repeated breaches of this Code represent grounds for the forum manager to take administrative action, such as moderation of messages and suspension of subscription, and for the Board to exercise the powers in the Constitution at cl.7 in relation to 'Disciplining of a Member'.

Purposes

The purposes of this Code are

  • to ensure that IA fora are effective for their purposes and pleasant to be in
  • to provide participants in IA fora with a sufficient understanding of what is acceptable behaviour by themselves and by others
  • to provide participants who play a 'peace-maker' role with a basis on which they can pour oil on troubled waters
  • to provide forum managers with a sufficiently clear basis for assessing behaviour and for taking administrative actions where they are warranted
  • to provide the Board with a sufficiently clear basis for assessing behaviour in the context of any necessary disciplinary measures

Behaviour

Things to do:

  • Be brief and interesting
  • Communicate in a style consistent with the venue
  • Interact with others calmly and politely
  • Constructively criticise arguments, but tolerate and respect viewpoints other than your own
  • Treat people as people, not bots
  • If intentionally making mildly inflammatory statements in order to stimulate debate, ensure that the posting contains a signal to that effect (e.g. ‘to stimulate debate, ...’, ‘just suppose ...’)
  • Remember that postings are very probably not limited in their distribution, are not ephemera, and are probably archived, and may be indexed by search-engines and hence subject to re-discovery over an extended period
  • If you consider someone's behaviour is not consistent with this Code, you can communicate with the person (calmly) off-list, or provide details to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Things to not do:

  • Do not attack individuals
  • Do not make comments that are, or may reasonably be perceived by others, to be aggressive, abusive, defamatory, discriminatory, racist or demeaning, or represent harassment or bullying
  • Do not make inflammatory comments whose intention or likely effect is to divide, damage or provoke ill will within the community - commonly referred to as ‘troll bait’
  • Do not make comments that are, or could be reasonably interpreted as being, partisan or party-political
  • Do not use the forum for commercial messages
  • Do not publish sexual or violent imagery or written depictions of them
  • Do not publish sexist, racist, or other exclusionary jokes
  • Do not disclose information that is confidential or privacy-sensitive