About

We’ve set up a few community principles to help CATs get the most out of our community. Please follow these principles when participating in CAT to encourage a friendly, safe space to share information and learn together.

Note: These Community Principles complement our Code of Conduct, which outline expected standards and behavior.

🌱 It’s a garden

How to use the community:

Share your experiences and ask questions

Engage with dialog in the community, share what you know, cultivate conversations. Participate in an authentic and active way. In doing so, you contribute to the health and longevity of this community. Exercise consideration and respect in speech and action.

Make it a conversation instead of treating CAT like Siri or a buffet

When getting information or advice from other CATs, consider how you can give back to the community. Can you check back in after following advice and share how it went? Can you document the answers you got in our internal knowledge base? Can you give others a shout-out? If you’re asking for a bigger commitment from others, how can you compensate them for the time and effort they invest to help you?

Give context when you share something

Why are you sharing this? Has it helped you understand something better? Did one quote really stick with you? Were you involved in the creation of this? What was your role? Do you agree or disagree with what’s said?

Avoid information overload

Long messages can feel overwhelming. Use the thread feature on Slack to give an overview of your post and go into more detail in the thread if you have something long to say.

Cross-posting content can become noisy. Only post in channels that are directly related to your post, and if a channel is for discussion please respect that - we have specific channels for jobs, sharing work and so on, so please use those. (more guidance)

Don’t send direct / private messages to lots of members out of the blue about your personal project(s) — use the #share-your-work channel if you want feedback or the #promotion channel if you want to promote your work or #external-events if you want to promote an event.

CATs are individuals

Please ensure your Display Name in Slack identifies you as an individual, not as an organization. This keeps things more clear and community-focused throughout the channels. First name only, First name/last initial, including pronouns, or including your organization name as part of your Display Name are all acceptable variations.

❤️ We are people behind our avatars

How to treat others and be a good CAT member

Actively listen to others

Respect people's time, expertise & lived experience. Read responses carefully before sharing your own point of view and listen actively when someone is talking at an event.

Respond with care

When giving advice or feedback or when reacting to a post or conversation, be supportive, honest and constructive.

Take responsibility when you make a mistake

Be aware that you don’t know all the answers. Stay open to learn from others and apologize if you make a mistake that causes harm to someone else.

Take breaks when you need them

The climate crisis will be around for a while and we need to be in it for the long run. Take care of yourself. Return to CAT when you feel refreshed and ready to participate and take action in a capacity that works for you.

Report it when something doesn’t look right

If you feel unsafe, you see an inappropriate comment or if something gets out of hand, reach out to any of the CAT organizers immediately. CAT members agree to our code of conduct upon joining the community and breaching the code of conduct has consequences.

Don’t publicly share personal information

We follow the Chatham House rule in our community. You’re free to use and share the information you receive but don’t reveal the identity or affiliations of other CATs unless they give their consent.