The Gradient is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone.
We want our communities to maintain a fun, pleasant, and harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion. In keeping with these aims, we do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form. Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately.
This code of conduct applies to all spaces of the Gradient, including mailing lists, chat servers, research meetings, reading groups, and other events, both online and offline. Anyone who violates this code of conduct may be sanctioned or expelled from these spaces at the discretion of the organizers of the Gradient.
No Harassment
Harassment, including the following activities, will not be tolerated:
- Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, age, race, or religion.
- Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment.
- Deliberate misgendering or use of ‘dead’ or rejected names.
- Gratuitous or off-topic sexual images or behaviour in spaces where they’re not appropriate.
- Physical contact and simulated physical contact (eg, textual descriptions like "hug" or “backrub“) without consent or after a request to stop.
- Threats of violence.
- 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 logging online activity for harassment purposes.
- Sustained disruption of discussion.
- Unwelcome sexual attention.
- Pattern of inappropriate social contact, such as requesting/assuming inappropriate levels of intimacy with others. The Gradient is intended to be a welcoming platform, so while friendships in support of research are encouraged, note that the Gradient is not a dating platform. Flirting or other unprofessional behavior may make someone uncomfortable. If a member requests another member to stop this type of behavior and it continues, it will be considered harassment.
- 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 vulnerable people from intentional abuse.
- Publication of non-harassing private communication.
Reporting
If you are being harassed by a member/guest/participant of/at the Gradient, notice that someone else is being harassed, believe confidentiality has been violated, or have any other concerns, please contact the organizers via email or a message on Slack or Discord. We will respond as promptly as we can.
This code of conduct applies to all spaces of the Gradient, but if you are being harassed by a member/guest/participant of/at the Gradient outside our spaces, we still want to know about it. We will take all good-faith reports of harassment by the Gradient members seriously. This includes harassment outside our spaces and harassment that took place at any point in time. The organizers reserve the right to exclude people from the Gradient based on their past behavior, including behavior outside the Gradient spaces and behavior towards people who are not in the communities maintained by the Gradient.
We will respect confidentiality requests for the purpose of protecting victims of abuse. At our discretion, we may publicly name a person about whom we’ve received harassment complaints, or privately warn third parties about them, if we believe that doing so will increase the safety of the members the Gradient or the general public. We will not name harassment victims without their affirmative consent.
Consequences
Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately.
If a participant engages in harassing behavior, the organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion from all spaces of the Gradient and identification of the participant as a harasser to other members of the Gradient or the general public.
Credit and License
This policy is licensed under the Creative Commons Zero license. It was inspired by and parts were copied from the ML Collective Code of Conduct.
