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Christian Williams (Jul 15 2020 at 20:37):Hello @everyone, here is the first draft of the code of conduct. We welcome your thoughts.
The Category Theory Community Server is a friendly, welcoming environment to learn and discuss category theory and its applications, as well as mathematics, science, and life. As part of this, we welcome beginners and encourage teaching. Technical, research-related questions and discussions are also welcome.
Here are our policies for maintaining a friendly, open culture:
Engage in constructive discussion. Try to understand what others know and how they are thinking. We welcome researchers, beginners and everything in between, so try to respond on the level of the readers when possible. Encourage helpful members by acknowledging their contributions publicly.
Appreciate diversity and uplift one another. The group is large, and our varied backgrounds and strengths are valuable. Avoid getting frustrated by ambiguity, "newbies" and the like: either be helpful or move along. Be patient and take satisfaction from sharing knowledge.
Mind others’ time. Consider that 1000+ people may read any given discussion here. Make your contributions relevant and reasonably concise. A debate is okay if it is respectful and purposeful; otherwise steer the topic back on track or let it go.
Be nice. We have no tolerance for rudeness, insults, bullying, or ad hominem arguments. After one official warning, users engaging in these behaviors will be banned. If you see someone engaged in these behaviors, either respond very politely, ignore them, or send a private message to a moderator.
Moderators:
@John Baez @Fabrizio Genovese @Christian Williams @Matteo Capucci @[Mod] Morgan Rogers @Jules Hedges @Nathanael Arkor @Paolo Perrone
If you are having any difficulty navigating Zulip, communicate this in any way you can and someone will surely find and help you. If you are interested in joining the team of moderators, get in touch!
Chetan Prakash (Jul 15 2020 at 22:37):Hi Christian,
This is great! I just left another research group because of one or two people’s gratuitous rudeness, intolerance of contrary ideas and ad hominem attacks on not only me, but even on junior members…
The only suggestion I can make here - and this could be merely a generational difference - is to say “Be Polite” rather than ”Be Nice”: sometimes mathematical disagreements can be heated and therefore may not be quite “nice," but there’s no reason for anyone to be rude.
But “nice” might feel more appropriate to most people.
Thanks,
Chetan
Chetan Prakash, Ph. D.
Consultant Researcher, UC Irvine
cprakashresearch@gmail.com<mailto:cprakashresearch@gmail.com>
Emeritus Professor, CSU, San Bernardino
cprakash@csusb.edu
+1-951-743-5941
Paul Fabel (Jul 15 2020 at 22:58):Thankyou for sending such a welcoming and inclusive message.
Best,
Paul
Christian Williams (Jul 15 2020 at 23:31):Hi Chetan, thanks! I think this change would be fine.
Lee Mondshein (Jul 16 2020 at 08:07):Thank you for this beautiful contribution.
If I may, I’d like to share a few ideas and hopes— not so much as
additions, but rather as suggestions for conversation at this thoughtful,
generative juncture.
Blend scholarship with pedagogy.
Several individuals in the community have a remarkable capacity to
combine depth with clarity. May they serve as an inspiration to each of us
in this learning community.
Weave connections
When possible, link ideas that connect separate discussions, and that
may engender fresh progress.
Build community.
Promote person-to-person connections, when shared or complementary
interests might create personal scholarly opportunities.
Build wells, not silos.
Pursue scholarly depth in a mathematically refreshing manner that
multiplies rather than divides energies.
— Lee Mondshein
Jules Hedges (Jul 16 2020 at 08:11):Chetan Prakash said:
The only suggestion I can make here - and this could be merely a generational difference - is to say “Be Polite” rather than ”Be Nice”: sometimes mathematical disagreements can be heated and therefore may not be quite “nice," but there’s no reason for anyone to be rude.
I'm being extremely pedantic, but since I'm British I am born knowing that it's possible to be polite without being nice
Miriam Backens (Jul 16 2020 at 09:46):I would phrase the first sentence as "The Category Theory Community Server aims to be a friendly, welcoming environment" -- it is inevitable that it will sometimes fail to be so.
For the "be nice" point: it would be good to explicitly specify behaviours that are not accepted, for an explanation of why this is important see e.g. https://adainitiative.org/2014/02/18/howto-design-a-code-of-conduct-for-your-community/
Stelios Tsampas (Jul 16 2020 at 13:18):Thank you for piecing this together @Christian Williams :grinning:
John Baez (Jul 16 2020 at 20:36):So maybe we should say "be polite and nice". :upside_down:
Henry Story (Aug 21 2020 at 12:16):It just occurred to me that if categorytheory.zulipchat were world readable, then that would allow one to point to a lot of the amazing content here from other web sites. After all, I guess the write access restriction is really only here to stop spammers and keep some order.
Fabrizio Genovese (Aug 21 2020 at 13:07):As a matter of fact I am already referencing to zulip convos in some papers I'm writing.
Fabrizio Genovese (Aug 21 2020 at 13:08):So, in any case, having a read-only access link to this server is going to be useful
Fabrizio Genovese (Aug 21 2020 at 13:08):I heard that zulip devs are quite friendly and open. Maybe we could ask them?
Reid Barton (Aug 21 2020 at 13:46):Some Zulip servers have publicly available archives, like https://leanprover-community.github.io/archive/ for the Lean server. (In fact the archives software was written by a Lean developer for this specific purpose, but it's now maintained as part of Zulip, I believe.) Shouldn't be too difficult to set up.
Jules Hedges (Aug 21 2020 at 13:54):Very nice!
Jules Hedges (Aug 21 2020 at 13:56):This got me thinking..... who knows how permanent it will be, but then how much classical category theory has been worked out on mailing lists, and the archives of those aren't exactly chiselled in stone either