Add "Social Rules" section to CoC

code_of_conduct.md

@@ -25,7 +25,97 @@ warning the offender or expulsion from the community. If you are being
 harassed, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any concerns,
 please contact an organizer immediately.
 
-### **NodeSchool Cincinnati**
+## Social rules
+
+> via [Recurse Center's User Guide][user-guide]
+
+Another way we try to remove obstacles to learning is by having a small set of
+social rules. These rules are intended to be lightweight, and to make more
+explicit certain social norms that are normally implicit. Most of our social
+rules really boil down to "don't be a jerk" or "don't be annoying." Of course,
+almost nobody sets out to be a jerk or annoying, so telling people not to be
+jerks isn't a very productive strategy. That's why our social rules are designed
+to curtail specific behavior we've found to be destructive to a supportive,
+productive, and fun learning environment.
+
+### No feigning surprise
+
+The first rule means you shouldn't act surprised when people say they don't know
+something. This applies to both technical things ("What?! I can't believe you
+don't know what the stack is!") and non-technical things ("You don't know who
+RMS is?!"). Feigning surprise has absolutely no social or educational benefit:
+When people feign surprise, it's usually to make them feel better about
+themselves and others feel worse. And even when that's not the intention, it's
+almost always the effect. As you've probably already guessed, this rule is
+tightly coupled to our belief in the importance of people feeling comfortable
+saying "I don't know" and "I don't understand."
+
+### No well-actually's
+
+A well-actually happens when someone says something that's almost - but not
+entirely - correct, and you say, "well, actually…" and then give a minor
+correction. This is especially annoying when the correction has no bearing on
+the actual conversation. This doesn't mean the Recurse Center isn't about
+truth-seeking or that we don't care about being precise. Almost all
+well-actually's in our experience are about grandstanding, not truth-seeking.
+(Thanks to Miguel de Icaza for originally coining the term "well-actually.")
+
+### No back-seat driving
+
+If you overhear people working through a problem, you shouldn't intermittently
+lob advice across the room. This can lead to the "too many cooks" problem, but
+more important, it can be rude and disruptive to half-participate in a
+conversation. This isn't to say you shouldn't help, offer advice, or join
+conversations. On the contrary, we encourage all those things. Rather, it just
+means that when you want to help out or work with others, you should fully
+engage and not just butt in sporadically.
+
+### No subtle -isms
+
+Our last social rule bans subtle racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and
+other kinds of bias. This one is different from the rest, because it covers a
+class of behaviors instead of one very specific pattern.
+
+Subtle -isms are small things that make others feel uncomfortable, things that
+we all sometimes do by mistake. For example, saying "It's so easy my grandmother
+could do it" is a subtle -ism. Like the other three social rules, this one is
+often accidentally broken. Like the other three, it's not a big deal to mess up
+– you just apologize and move on.
+
+If you see a subtle -ism at the Recurse Center, you can point it out to the
+relevant person, either publicly or privately, or you can ask one of the faculty
+to say something. After this, we ask that all further discussion move off of
+public channels. If you are a third party, and you don't see what could be
+biased about the comment that was made, feel free to talk to faculty. Please
+don't say, "Comment X wasn't homophobic!" Similarly, please don't pile on to
+someone who made a mistake. The "subtle" in "subtle -isms" means that it's
+probably not obvious to everyone right away what was wrong with the comment.
+
+We want the Recurse Center to be a space with as little bigotry as possible in
+it. Therefore, if you see sexism, racism, etc. outside of the Recurse Center,
+please don't bring it in. So, for example, please don't start a discussion of
+the latest offensive comment from Random Tech Person Y. For many people,
+especially those who may have spent time in unpleasant environments, these
+conversations can be very distracting. At the Recurse Center, we want to remove
+as many distractions as possible so everyone can focus on programming. There are
+many places in the world to discuss and debate these issues, but there are
+precious few where people can avoid them. We want the Recurse Center to be one
+of those places.
+
+### Why have social rules?
+
+The goal isn't to burden everyone with a bunch of annoying rules, or to give us
+a stick to bludgeon people with for "being bad." Rather, these rules are
+designed to help all of us build a pleasant, productive, and fearless community.
+
+If someone says, "hey, you just feigned surprise," or "that's subtly sexist,"
+don't worry. Just apologize, reflect for a second, and move on. It doesn't mean
+you're a "bad" person, or even a "bad" Recurser. As we said above, these rules
+are meant to be lightweight. We've all done these things before. In fact, we
+originally adopted a no well-actually policy for our company because Nick and
+Dave well-actually'd each other all the time.
+
+## **NodeSchool Cincinnati**
 
 * Organizers: [Matt Hernandez](https://twitter.com/fiveisprime), [Jack Boberg](https://twitter.com/jackboberg), [Tara Z. Manicsic](https://twitter.com/tzmanics), [Alex Padgett](https://twitter.com/apcomplete), [Jeremiah Harlan](https://twitter.com/theworkflow15), [Francesca Varney](https://twitter.com/varFranv)
 
@@ -42,3 +132,6 @@ and the
 as a starting point. This Code of Conduct, like its inspirations, is licensed
 under the
 [Creative Commons Zero license](http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).
+
+
+[user-guide]: https://www.recurse.com/manual#sub-sec-social-rules