# Community

The Hypothesis community is small for the moment but is full of excellent people who can answer your questions and help you out. Please do join us.

The two major places for community discussion are:

- The mailing list.
- An IRC channel, #hypothesis on freenode, which is more active than the mailing list.

Feel free to use these to ask for help, provide feedback, or discuss anything remotely Hypothesis related at all.

## Code of conduct

Hypothesis’s community is an inclusive space, and everyone in it is expected to abide by a code of conduct.

At the high level the code of conduct goes like this:

1. Be kind
2. Be respectful
3. Be helpful

While it is impossible to enumerate everything that is unkind, disrespectful or unhelpful, here are some specific things that are definitely against the code of conduct:

1. -isms and -phobias (e.g. racism, sexism, transphobia and homophobia) are unkind, disrespectful and unhelpful. Just don’t.
2. All software is broken. This is not a moral failing on the part of the authors. Don’t give people a hard time for bad code.
3. It’s OK not to know things. Everybody was a beginner once, nobody should be made to feel bad for it.
4. It’s OK not to want to know something. If you think someone’s question is fundamentally flawed, you should still ask permission before explaining what they should actually be asking.
5. Note that “I was just joking” is not a valid defence.

### What happens when this goes wrong?

For minor infractions, I’ll just call people on it and ask them to apologise and not do it again. You should feel free to do this too if you’re comfortable doing so.

Major infractions and repeat offenders will be banned from the community.

Also, people who have a track record of bad behaviour outside of the Hypothesis community may be banned even if they obey all these rules if their presence is making people uncomfortable.

At the current volume level it’s not hard for me to pay attention to the whole community, but if you think I’ve missed something please feel free to alert me. You can either message me as DRMacIver on freenode or send a me an email at david@drmaciver.com.