Boost Community // Code of Conduct & Community Guidelines

Welcome to the community! The Boost Community is a community for and by the side hustlers of the world. Those who believe in disrupting the status quo of employment and shifting towards doing what they’re passionate about for themselves and by themselves.

This is a community of the self-employed, freelancers, creatives, hustlers, and businesses of one alike. We’re excited to be building a diverse community of support to help everyone feel a little bit less alone on their journey.

This document aims to make the Boost Community a safe place for everyone, one where all are welcome and heard. The rules, guidelines, and norms to follow apply to every channel and extension of the community. These are established to ensure that no one is left out or made to feel as if they don’t belong. There will always be a place here for you.

Rules and Guidelines

We’ve set these rules in our community so that everyone can feel respected and comfortable participating in discussions. If you think these need editing or are missing something important, please bring it up to a community moderator.

Although specific, you’ll generally fit in if you live by the mantra “be kind to others.”

Rules

These are the rules we hold ourselves to as a community. They’re meant to be pretty simple but have more in-depth explanations in the appendix. Breaking any of these rules will result in your prompt removal from the community.

• No harassment of any kind will be tolerated. We value people’s experiences, perspectives, and ideas.

• No spam or misleading content. We do encourage you to add value and take pride in your work but avoid things that don’t add value to the community--like clickbait or false advertising.

• Offer your best self. We’re building a community of support, and being a part of that means helping each other in the ways we’re best positioned to.

Inclusivity Statement

The Boost Community is an all-inclusive space.

We encourage everyone to participate and are committed to building a community for all. Although we are only human and may fail, we seek to treat everyone as fairly and equally as possible. Whenever someone has made a mistake, we expect them to take responsibility for it.

Although this list cannot be exhaustive, we explicitly honor diversity in age, gender, gender identity or expression, culture, ethnicity, language, national origin, political beliefs, profession, race, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and ability. We will not tolerate discrimination based on any of the characteristics above.

Our community prioritizes marginalized people's safe existence in the community. We will not tolerate comments encouraging insensitivity toward boundary statements, such as "leave me alone," "go away," or "I'm not discussing this with you," or racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behaviors or assumptions.

Incident Reporting & Moderation

To ensure safety in our community, we have a group of moderators running our community. If at any point in time you feel uncomfortable, unsafe, or experience an issue, please reach out to a community moderator via Slack DM. We promise you that everything said to a moderator is done so in confidence and won’t be upset with you. There is no voice too small to be heard.

Moderators are denoted by the “Mod” tag next to their names. You can reach out to any of these individuals. They also work to keep the community active and bring ideas to the group. Our current moderators are:

• Jasmine Wilson

• PJ Zaiac

• Tim McDonald

Community Norms

While our rules are “hard guidelines” drawn in the sand, norms are more beliefs or ways of acting that guide how we think about community. These are helpful for framing what we think makes a good community member and how best to contribute.

• Yes and: seek to build each other up in interactions and add to people’s ideas instead of striking them down.

• Quality over quantity: in our interactions, we aim to have value instead of sheer numbers. We measure success by quality & outcome

• Create opportunity: when we join forces and work together, we can get further. This is especially true when we can create opportunities for another.

Appendix

Harassment includes, but is not limited to:

• Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, race, age, regional discrimination, political or religious affiliation

• Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment

• Deliberate misgendering. This includes deadnaming or persistently using a pronoun that does not correctly reflect a person’s gender identity. You must address people by the name they give you when not addressing them by their username or handle

• Inappropriate physical contact and simulated physical contact (eg, textual descriptions like "hug" or "backrub") without consent or after a request to stop

• Threats of violence, both physical and psychological

• Incitement of violence towards any individual, including encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in self-harm

• Deliberate intimidation

• Stalking or following

• Doxing behavior, or the act of publicly revealing someone’s private information without their consent

• Harassing photography or recording, including accessing private online activity for harassment purposes

• Sustained disruption of discussion

• Unwelcome sexual attention, including sexual images or behavior

• Patterns 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 others from intentional abuse

• Publication of private communication without second-party consent