Our Code of Conduct

Adam FortunaAvatar for Adam Fortuna

By Adam Fortuna

4 min read

Code of Conduct Overview

The scope of this community is to build strong and meaningful connections and to learn and discover new books and authors. And make friends.

In order to meet the goals of this community, it’s important for members to feel like they are in a safe place that is populated by people with shared interests. Let’s keep our communications close to the scope of the community (i.e., learning, discovering books, and sharing information and ideas).

As we have people from around the globe, all communication must be in English.

As such, we request that you read and adhere to the guidelines that follow.

The short version

Be Cool: This community welcomes people from all walks of life, in all forms. We don’t tolerate harassment. If you experience or witness inappropriate behaviour, we encourage you to contact the Community Manager.

Be Respectful: Treat others online as you would treat them in real life. Respectfully disagree when you don’t align with others’ opinions.

Be careful with the words that you choose. Be kind to others. Do not insult or put down other participants. Harassment and other exclusionary behaviour aren’t acceptable.

Collaborate openly: Be open and helpful when collaborating with others.

Ask for help, when unsure: The Community Managers and the Hardcover team are always here to help.

Please, DO NOT:

  • Make personal attacks on other community members;
  • Post prejudiced comments, profanity, or sexual content or remarks. This includes text, images, or links featuring nudity, sex, hard violence, or other graphically disturbing content.
  • Discriminate against others on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, religion, race, nationality, lifestyle choices, health, body size, age, disability, unbalanced mindset, neuro(a)typicality;
  • No offensive names and profile pictures. You will be asked to change your name or picture if the staff deems them inappropriate;
  • Spam and/or Ponzi scheme messages posted on public channels & DMs.

The long version

We do not tolerate the harassment of participants in any form. This code of conduct applies to every member of the Hardcover Community.

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.
  • 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.
  • A pattern of inappropriate social contact, such as requesting/assuming unacceptable 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.

Intellectual property and the sharing of content in and outside the group

The strength of the Hardcover community lies in our members’ generosity and willingness to contribute their thoughts, experiences, and insights to help each other learn, grow and have fun. In turn, members are expected to respect each others’ intellectual contributions and/or property. As such, we will not tolerate users who engage in plagiarism, infringement of copyright and/or intellectual property, sharing others’ words and ideas without attribution, or mining the group for financial gain or profit.

The following behaviour is strictly prohibited:

  • Passing off someone’s ideas or words as your own (even if you’ve changed some of the languages)
  • Sharing someone else’s ideas or words without attribution
  • Failing to use quotation marks to indicate you’re reproducing someone else’s words
  • Deliberately misrepresenting or lying about the source of your contributions
  • Sharing content posted to the group, including screenshots, messages, or other written or visual content (anonymised or not) outside of the community, without express permission from the Community Manager or Founder.

These bullets are adapted from plagiarism.com (see how easy that was?).

Reporting violations of the Hardcover Code of Conduct

If you’re being harassed by a member of the Hardcover Community or notice any other violation of the Code of Conduct, you can report your experience through any of the following channels:

  • Send an email to jules at hardcover.app

Consequences

We will take action when we see someone violating these guidelines. Sometimes that means a short discussion; other times, it means a warning. In extreme cases, this will mean more definitive actions, like, Mute, Kick, Ban, or Hardcover account deactivation or revoked privileges.

Code of Conduct Updates 

We reserve the right to make changes to the code of conduct at any time. Updates will be disclosed to all Hardcover users when they are made. If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions for our code of conduct, please contact the administrator and they will get back to you. 

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