The Be Your Own Sunrise® platform includes people from all around the world, and from a wide variety of different backgrounds, religions, and cultural norms. This diversity is one of the things that makes our Community great but it can also make communication challenging.

The purpose of our Be Your Own Sunrise® Code of Conduct is to ensure that the Be Your Own Sunrise® platform remains a welcoming, friendly and supportive place for all members – regardless of their colour, religion, national origin, gender, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, personal appearance, political affiliation, marital status, family responsibilities/parenthood, veteran status, education, disability, genetic information, and any other legally protected class. 

These rules will continue to be developed in a manner that involves all stakeholders in the development and implementation of fair online learning rules.

The Code of Conduct reflects the ethics and values of the Be Your Own Sunrise® platform and community. The Be Your Own Sunrise® team can make the final decision on whether a behaviour is acceptable or not.

Be Your Own Sunrise guidelines

This Code of Conduct applies to all forum posts and private messages posted on Be Your Own Sunrise®, including BeYourOwnSunrise.com, any online and face to face communities developed and managed by Be Your Own Sunrise®, and all course discussion forums

• – We expect all activity on the platform to follow the Code of Conduct. If you do not follow the Code of Conduct, you or your posts may be removed from Be Your Own Sunrise®.
• – Be Your Own Sunrise® and our partners may provide helpful information within the platform, though we are not able to respond to every post. Peer responses, while helpful and appreciated, are not communications from Be Your Own Sunrise® or our partners.
• – You own the rights to any content you post in the Be Your Own Sunrise® platform. Be Your Own Sunrise® is granted a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to use and commercialise any content you post in the platform. By posting on the platform, you grant Be Your Own Sunrise® the right to use any content within the post without restriction or compensation.
• – Be Your Own Sunrise® is permitted to use any content you post in the Community, on other parts of BeYourOwnSunrise.com, on our social media channels, in our marketing materials, or in articles about Be Your Own Sunrise® printed or posted by third parties. When using your content in this way, Be Your Own Sunrise® will ask permission before using your image or full name alongside any content you’ve posted. For such use cases, all rights to the final work will be retained by Be Your Own Sunrise®.
• – Unless otherwise stated, all content posted on the Be Your Own Sunrise® platform is publicly visible and searchable online.
• – If you delete your Be Your Own Sunrise® account, your Community posts and private messages will be anonymised.

Your responsibilities as a Be Your Own Sunrise user

All users have the responsibility to:

1. Contribute to maintaining a safe, supportive, and orderly online learning environment that is conducive to learning and to show respect and dignity to other persons and to property.
2. Be familiar with and abide by all Be Your Own Sunrise® policies, rules, and regulations dealing with user conduct.
3. React to direction given by instructors, administrators, and other Be Your Own Sunrise® personnel in a respectful, positive manner.
4. Maintain behaviour free from all forms of bullying, harassment, and discrimination.
5. Ask questions when they do not understand.
6. Seek help in solving problems that might lead to discipline.
7. Accept responsibility for their actions.

Inappropriate behavior

We want all Be Your Own Sunrise® users to have the best possible experience they can. In order to be clear with what that means, we’ve provided a list of examples of behaviors that are inappropriate for Be Your Own Sunrise® users:

• Dangerous speech. Any form of expression (e.g. speech, text, or images) that can increase the risk that its audience will condone or commit violence against members of another group. Key traits of dangerous speech: Aimed at groups, promotes fear, often false, and harms indirectly. Dangerous speech can include: Coded language (terms familiar to in-group).
• Harassment or deliberate intimidation. This includes offensive verbal comments related to gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, religion, sexual images in public spaces, stalking, and/or deliberate intimidation.
• Violence or threats of violence. Violence and threats of violence are not acceptable – online or offline. This includes incitement of violence toward any individual, including encouraging a person to commit self-harm. This also includes posting or threatening to post other people’s personally identifying information (doxxing) online.
• Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist language, or otherwise exclusionary language. This includes deliberately referring to someone by a gender that they do not identify with, and/or questioning the legitimacy of an individual’s gender identity. If you’re unsure if a word is derogatory, don’t use it. This also includes repeated subtle and/or indirect discrimination.
• Unwelcome sexual attention or behavior that contributes to a sexualised environment. This includes sexualised comments, jokes or imagery in interactions, communications or presentation materials, as well as inappropriate sexual advances.
• Influencing or encouraging inappropriate behavior. If you influence or encourage another person to violate the Code of Conduct, you may face the same consequences as if you had violated the Code of Conduct.
• Sustained disruption of online discussion, talks, or other events. Sustained disruption of events, online discussions, or meetings, including talks and presentations, will not be tolerated. This includes ‘talking over’ or ‘heckling’ event speakers or influencing crowd actions that cause hostility in event sessions. 
• Abuse of any peer review system. This includes posing as another learner to give yourself a positive peer review; colluding with other users to give each other positive peer reviews; and posting discriminatory, violent, or otherwise abusive content in the peer review feedback space. 
• Retaliation. Punishing someone for engaging in protected behaviour is not permitted. This includes harassing, bullying, or filing a false report against a user for raising a sincere concern about your own behaviour. It’s unacceptable to give a user a bad peer review because you dislike or disagree with them.

Be Your Own Sunrise® users are asked to stop any inappropriate behavior and are expected to comply immediately. If you are the subject of an incident report or if you wish to report inappropriate behaviour, your personal data will be processed by Be Your Own Sunrise® as set forth in this Code of Conduct. You consent to such processing.

Community guidelines

Below is additional guidance to keep in mind when interacting in forums, like the Be Your Own Sunrise® Community or Course discussion forums.

Respect

Remember that context can get lost when communicating via text, and when one or more discussion participants is using a language that is not their native language. Strive to make sure your communication is clear and not unintentionally offensive. Emojis can be used to add context but cannot make up for a rude post.

• Always treat anyone using Be Your Own Sunrise® or working for Be Your Own Sunrise® with respect.
• Never make any posts which may upset or offend another person, including sexual images or descriptions, real or implied violence, or profanity.
• Never use language intended to attack, accuse, insult, harass, intimidate, oppress, derogate, or abuse another person on Be Your Own Sunrise®.

For more information, see Be Your Own Sunrise’s Acceptable Use Policy. 

Sensitivity and empathy

Be Your Own Sunrise® has courses on many controversial or emotional subjects, such as mental health, abuse, trauma, sexual assault, etc. Talking about things like this in our global Community helps us to learn more about the world and understand one another better. We expect discussions to be academic in nature, respectful, and open to all points of view.

• Never use any language which would be insensitive or offensive to someone based on gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, religion, or political standpoint.

Problems, feedback and criticism

We welcome feedback that could be used to make the Be Your Own Sunrise® experience better.

• Please use the appropriate channels to provide such feedback or to report problems.
• Avoid simply being negative – constructive criticism is valued, unproductive negativity is not.

This Community is focused around learning, so it’s expected that members may make mistakes, get things wrong, or not understand fully. Feedback and critique are an important part of learning so please feel free to provide it when appropriate, keeping in mind the following:

• Always critique the actual work or method, not the person behind it,
• Never belittle someone for not knowing or understanding something, 
• Give feedback privately if you think it may be embarrassing for the recipient, and
• If someone responds poorly to feedback don’t force them to take it, just stop interacting.

Protecting your own privacy

Avoid sharing your own or other people’s personal information publicly online. Don’t include any of the following in the body of a public post:

• First and last name
• Email address
• Phone number
• Address
• Account numbers
• Any other piece of information which could be used to identify or harm you or others

For more information, check out Be Your Own Sunrise’s Privacy Policy.

Resolving and reporting problems

Disagreements and misunderstandings are normal in such a diverse community. Ask for clarification and attempt to have a calm discussion before assuming that someone is being offensive. Don’t lower your own standards of communication in response.

If that isn’t possible, report the post by flagging it to our moderators.

Posts which do not adhere to the Code of Conduct may be edited or deleted.

Potential consequences for violating the Code of Conduct

This list is not inclusive, and Be Your Own Sunrise® reserves the right to take any action it deems necessary. Possible responses to an incident include:

• Nothing, if the behaviour was determined to not be a Code of Conduct violation
• A verbal or emailed warning
• Requiring that the reported person not direct message an online community member
• Requiring that the reported person not join specific Community channels or discussion forums
• Not publishing the video or slides of a talk that violated the Code of Conduct
• Immediately ending roles that the reported person holds such as mentor or instructor
• Requiring that a person not participate as a mentor or instructor
• Requiring that a person immediately leave the Course, Community Channel, and or/Be Your Own Sunrise, and not return
• Removing the reported person from community online chat servers or mailing lists (either indefinitely or for a certain time period)
• Removing the reported person from admin or moderator rights to community infrastructure
• Removing a person from membership of relevant institutions

Enforcement of the Code of Conduct

All reports made to Be Your Own Sunrise® will be taken seriously. Those who don’t follow the Code of Conduct in good faith may face repercussions deemed appropriate by our team. This is how we will generally handle misconduct: 

1. Warning. For most first-time misconduct, our team will remove offending content and send a warning. Most issues are resolved here.
2. Account suspension. For repetitive misconduct or behavior containing harassment, bigotry, or abuse, our team will impose temporary suspension. 
3. Account expulsion. For very rare cases, our team will expel people who display a pattern of harmful destructive behavior toward the Be Your Own Sunrise community.

Reporting a Code of Conduct incident

We encourage Be Your Own Sunrise® users to report any incidents that violate that Code of Conduct via this article. The report will be handled by the Be Your Own Sunrise® team and the user who violated the Code of Conduct will be contacted directly. 

Contact our support team to report a Code of Conduct incident. In your report, please provide the following information: 

• Link to the area of incident
• Screenshot of the violation and text
• Written text of the misconduct
• Visible name of user

If you are the subject of a reported incident or if you wish to report inappropriate behavior, we will strive to maintain the anonymity and confidentiality of all individuals involved. There may be times, however, when the Be Your Own Sunrise® team may request permission to identify the individual(s) in order to engage in necessary correspondence to gather additional information to be able to advocate for a fair process and resolution.