Participation Guidelines - PracticingDeveloper/guidebook GitHub Wiki

You're about to enter a dedicated learning space for programmers from all corners of the technology world. I’m very happy that you’ve decided to join us.

Please read through the following participation guidelines carefully. They will not only help you get started on the right foot, but will also help you contribute in a useful way to the very unique space we have created here.

The only way to create an effective learning space is to start from a position of mutual respect for each other as human beings and fellow practitioners.

For this reason, we have a strictly enforced Code of Conduct that reflects our commitment to providing a harassment-free experience for all participants in The Workshop.

For questions about our policies or to report an issue, email [email protected].

This space is known for its deep and thoughtful conversations. This is no coincidence: it’s made possible by the way we tend to interact with each other.

Most of our discussions focus on concrete experiences rather than generic opinions, and they tend to include lots of examples to establish a shared sense of context.

We also try to cast a wide net in our conversations, preferring topics that many participants find interesting rather than focusing on very specific questions that would would only be relevant to the people asking them.

Unlike many other online discussion groups, we encourage discussing one topic at a time in our main discussion channels (e.g. #general in Slack). If you see an active conversation happening, try to wait for it to wrap up before changing topics or posting unrelated messages. This makes the logs easier to read for those who aren't actively participating in the discussions, and also allows us to build knowledge together rather than talking past one another.

Our discussion groups are made up of people from many different cultural, occupational, and technical backgrounds. As long as you can keep that in mind, you will almost certainly get a lot out of any discussion you participate in here.

This is not the open, public internet! It’s a semi-private space that I’ve created in the hopes of providing a useful service to the software development community and those that are impacted by the work of software developers.

In practice, this means that this space is different in two important ways from other groups you might be participating in:

(1) If you want to share content from any conversation you see here, it’s necessary to get permission from everyone involved in the discussion.

(2) Although I hope this space is useful to you, it’s ultimately up to me to decide how to run our learning activities. If I’m not serving your needs well, it’d be best to look elsewhere rather than expecting major changes to happen here.

These constraints limit us in some ways, but liberate us in others. The tradeoffs should become clear to you as soon as you spend a bit of time here.

Many of us are working as professional software developers, and others among us are preparing for a career in software development. With this in mind, it's natural for the topic of work and career to come up often, and that's fine! General discussions about how to build a good career in software development or specific questions about problems at work are welcome, as long as they might be of interest to others here.

That said, we have a strict no-recruiting policy for this space. If you happen to get to know people here well enough that they'd feel comfortable hearing from you privately about some opportunity, that's great. But anything short of that is strongly discouraged -- to maintain a learning and experience-oriented focus for the space rather than a vocational atmosphere.

To be super clear about this: If you're here to find work or to offer jobs to others, then you're looking in the wrong place. But it's a fine place to advance your career through sharing experiences and practicing together. :-)

Although this is a serious space for study and practice, it's made up of people who are knee-deep in many of the very same problems and challenges that you are.

You will find that despite all your surface level differences (culture, occupational background, skillset, etc.), that you have just as much in common with your fellow practicing developers.

Discovering these fascinating similarities and differences can and should be a joyful experience, and I hope you use this space to do exactly that.