Code of Conduct

This is a Civilized Place for Public Discussion

Please treat this discussion forum with the same respect you would a public park. We are a shared community resource dedicated to Earth science collaboration and innovation. This forum is a place to share skills, knowledge, and interests through ongoing conversation within the EarthCODE community.

These guidelines aim to foster a kind, friendly environment for civilized public discourse across our diverse scientific clusters and working groups.

Improve the Discussion

Help us make this a great place for discussion by always adding something positive, however small. Before posting, consider browsing existing topics to discover ongoing conversations and connect with others who share your interests.

One way to improve the discussion is by discovering ones that are already happening. Spend time browsing the topics here before replying or starting your own, and you’ll have a better chance of meeting others who share your interests.

Our forum is organized into several key categories:

• General: For introductions, announcements, and general Q&A
• Science Clusters & Working Groups: Dedicated areas for specific science domains (such as, for example, Oceanography, Agriculture, Forestry and others)
• EarthCODE Architecture: Technical discussions on architecture, metadata standards, and development of the EarthCODE platform
• Technical Support: For troubleshooting and guidance about EarthCODE platforms
• Training and Resources: Discuss and find tutorials, educational resources and best practices for FAIR science
• Data & Workflows: Discuss datasets and workflows published on EarthCODE
• Community Engagement: Attend and find events and recognize community contributions
• Feedback and Suggestions: Share ideas for improvements to the EarthCODE platform

Spend time exploring these categories to find relevant discussions and contribute meaningfully.

The topics discussed here matter to us, and we want you to act as if they matter to you, too. Be respectful of the topics and the people discussing them, even if you disagree with some of what is being said.

Be Agreeable, Even When You Disagree

You may wish to respond by disagreeing. That’s fine. But remember to criticize ideas, not people. Please avoid:

• Name-calling
• Ad hominem attacks
• Responding to a post’s tone instead of its actual content
• Knee-jerk contradiction

Instead, provide thoughtful insights that improve the conversation.

Your Participation Counts

Your contributions shape the future of EarthCODE and our Earth science community. Engage in discussions that make this forum an interesting and productive place for scientific collaboration. Use Discourse tools like bookmarks, likes, and flags to highlight valuable contributions and maintain the quality of our discussions. Use the EarthCODE portal to find and access published experiments, products, data or workflows and join discussions.

Let’s leave our community better than we found it.

If You See a Problem, Flag It

Moderators have special authority; they are responsible for this forum. But so are you. With your help, moderators can be community facilitators, not just janitors or police.

When you see bad behavior, don’t reply. Replying encourages bad behavior by acknowledging it, consumes your energy, and wastes everyone’s time. Just flag it. If enough flags accrue, action will be taken, either automatically or by moderator intervention.

In order to maintain our community, moderators reserve the right to remove any content and any user account for any reason at any time. Moderators do not preview new posts; the moderators and site operators take no responsibility for any content posted by the community.

Always Be Civil

Nothing sabotages a healthy conversation like rudeness:

• Be civil. Don’t post anything that a reasonable person would consider offensive, abusive, or hate speech.
• Keep it clean. Don’t post anything obscene or sexually explicit.
• Respect each other. Don’t harass or grief anyone, impersonate people, or expose their private information.
• Respect our forum. Don’t post spam or otherwise vandalize the forum.

These are not concrete terms with precise definitions — avoid even the appearance of any of these things. If you’re unsure, ask yourself how you would feel if your post was featured on the front page of a major news site.

This is a public forum, and search engines index these discussions. Keep the language, links, and images safe for family and friends.

Keep It Tidy

Help us maintain an organized forum by:

• Posting topics in the correct category
• Avoiding cross-posting or no-content replies
• Using the "Like" button instead of posting agreement comments
• Utilizing "Reply as a Linked Topic" for new discussion threads

Use the EarthCODE portal to find and access published experiments, products, data or workflows and join discussions. From there, you have the ability to either contribute to the existing topic about the item or start a new one.

When using the EarthCODE Catalog:

• Use the "Discuss This" feature to start forum discussions directly from catalog items
• Topics created this way will be automatically tagged with relevant metadata
• These discussions will be linked back to the original datasets or experiments
• This integration helps maintain connections between scientific resources and community conversations

Remember that organizing discussions around specific datasets, workflows, or experiments helps others discover relevant content and fosters more focused, productive conversations within our Earth science community.

Post Only Your Own Stuff

You may not post anything digital that belongs to someone else without permission. You may not post descriptions of, links to, or methods for stealing someone’s intellectual property (software, video, audio, images, data, research), or for breaking any other law.

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This site is operated by your friendly moderator team and you, the community. If you have any further questions about how things should work here, open a new topic in #site-feedback and let’s discuss! If there’s a critical or urgent issue that can’t be handled by a meta topic or flag, contact the moderators.