Code of Conduct

Coexistence within the group

Disagreements are real

We are still reeling from the consequences of a decade where the prime cultural commodity was the performance of shallow acceptance, where weapons manufacturers and the purveyors of mass surveillance technology pretended to care about people's right to live; thus creating a reactionary wave of resentment from the weak-willed. Even the persecuted have sacrificed some of their limbs and thrown others into the wood-chipper to satisfy a puritanism that has now become mainstream.

Here, we come across the main distiction between our organization and all others, exemplified by the usage of the term "weak-willed" in the previous paragraph: people believe things. There is no such thing as someone who is "misinformed", who secretly agrees with us and is ripe for enlightenment, their views being simply a result of a semantic difference.

Of course, there are those open to real discussion and those who are not; figuring this out is a matter of intuition. However, someone is not exonerated from the status of holding a true irreconcilable disagreement because they are rich or poor, gay or straight, because we believe them to be the kind of person who should agree with us. This applies to minor disagreements that allow for coexistence in small social environments like the RTC, as much as it applies to gigantic societal rifts between those who hold an anti-human view and those who do not. Someone who defends, for example, the wanton extermination of entire populations carried out by the State of Israel holds a position that is completely irreconcilable; it doesn't matter if they only do so because their pastor tells them to, because their family is zionist, because their colleagues do so... a belief is not less fervent or less true because it was arrived at through an "incorrect" or "irrational" process. Defending the disenfranchisement of entire populations merely because it is popular, following the wave, "being cattle", is also a belief in itself.

We are all volunteers

The RTC is primarily a volunteer effort, and as such, it is important to respect contributors' schedules and how it affects their ability to attend to the tasks they have taken on. Chapter structures, software architectures, submissions processes: all should be tailored to this essential reality of the group. While we do not discourage trust between members, a project should generally be structured around the possibility that many of its participants may have to take long breaks.

When people feel pressured beyond reason working on a project, that is a failure of project management and it should be a subject of discussion. A blind spot to this is maintenance: be it in regards to software maintenance, continuous revision processes for existing publications, or weekly alignment between members of a project. The way our efforts are architected should not create a passive maintenance burden of more than 20 minutes per week.

Mutual respect

Members should respect each other's existence, right to civil life, and right of identity and self-identification. This encompasses everything from race, to disability, to gender status, to language (and written dialects), to romantic and sexual preference (or lack thereof).

It is impossible to delineate what "respect" actually means, and so this is a policy mostly to be enforced organically, with it being kept in mind that mere spiteful toleration does not fit the definition of respect.

Unacceptable Behavior

No passive-aggressive moral abuse

While "mutual respect" implies a veto on abusive conduct to others, such as obvious insults and gratuitous discrimination, we are also mindful of "concern trolling", wherein someone frames insults as vague concerns, directed towards a wide group of people or to no one in particular, but whose semantic content clearly intends to hurt someone in a way where they cannot reply without seeming unreasonable. This is to be considered a worse offense than straightforward abuse.

Abuse of technological privileges, even in reciprocity

The abuse of rights over our tech infrastructure to pursue personal grudges is unacceptable and permanently hurts the trust of those who depend on them. This includes abuse done in reciprocity, when the dependent's behavior is likewise unacceptable.

Use of technological measures against dependents must be measured and proportional, except in cases where someone is victimized, and must be limited in scope. For example, if someone whose website we are hosting puts up content targeting an RTC member, an acceptable immediate measure would be to block the content and temporarily lock credentials to the hosting account in case of a potential compromise. In our position of trust, it would not be acceptable to publicly hassle the hostee back.

Reporting

Report concerns and violations directly to the Center at rtc (dot) report (at) comrades (dot) sbs. If you do not wish to contact the Center, approach the member of the group whom you trust which has the largest amount of technical privileges.