Conduct

Geek Herring is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, age, race, or religion. We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form.

This code of conduct applies to all Geek Herring spaces, including Discord, Twitch, Steam, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Book Club, our newsletter, website, and all other spaces we gather in, both online and off. Anyone who violates this code of conduct may be sanctioned or expelled from these spaces at the discretion of the Mod Team.

Some Geek Herring spaces may have additional rules in place, which will be made clearly available to participants. Participants are responsible for knowing and abiding by these rules.
Longer version
Geek Herring is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone. We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form.

This code of conduct applies to all Geek Herring spaces, including Discord, Twitch, Steam, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Book Club, our newsletter, website, and all other spaces we gather in, both online and off. Anyone who violates this code of conduct may be sanctioned or expelled from these spaces at the discretion of the Mod Team.

Some Geek Herring spaces may have additional rules in place, which will be made clearly available to participants. Participants are responsible for knowing and abiding by these rules.

Harassment includes:

• 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
• 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.

Geek Herring prioritises marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. The Mod Team reserves the right not to act on complaints regarding:

• ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’
• Reasonable communication of boundaries, such as “leave me alone,” “go away,” or “I’m not discussing this with you.”
• Communicating in a ‘tone’ you don’t find congenial
• Criticizing racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behaviour or assumptions

Reporting

If you are being harassed by a member of Geek Herring, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact the Mod Team at hi@geekherring.com or reach out privately to Amanda, Monika, Denis, or Thom. If the person who is harassing you is on the Mod Team, they will recuse themselves from handling your incident. We will respond as promptly as we can.

This code of conduct applies to Geek Herring spaces, but if you are being harassed by a member of Geek Herring outside our spaces, we still want to know about it. We will take all good-faith reports of harassment by Geek Herring members, especially the Mod Team, seriously. This includes harassment outside our spaces and harassment that took place at any point in time. The abuse team reserves the right to exclude people from Geek Herring based on their past behaviour, including behaviour outside Geek Herring spaces and behaviour towards people who are not in Geek Herring.

In order to protect volunteers from abuse and burnout, we reserve the right to reject any report we believe to have been made in bad faith. Reports intended to silence legitimate criticism may be deleted without response.

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 Geek Herring members or the general public. We will not name harassment victims without their affirmative consent.

Consequences

Participants asked to stop any harassing behaviour are expected to comply immediately.

If a participant engages in harassing behaviour, the Mod Team may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion from all Geek Herring spaces and identification of the participant as a harasser to other Geek Herring members or the general public.

Steps Taken by the Mod Team:

• Participants engaging in reported harassing behaviour will immediately be suspended on Discord, pending an investigation into the alleged behaviour.
• An investigation into alleged abuse will begin, taking into account all sides of the story from the accuser, accused, and any witnesses.
• The Mod Team will keep meticulous notes and screenshots of any offences and all communications during the investigation.
• If harassing or abusive behaviour is confirmed, the offending participant will be removed from all Geek Herring spaces without appeal.
• If harassing or abusive behaviour is untrue, the participant guilty of slander will be removed from all Geek Herring spaces without appeal.