By taking this course, you agree to the following code of conduct.

Note: This list might change slightly. You're responsible for whatever it says when the class begins on September 5.

Code of Conduct

Respect the Class

Please be aware that anything you publish online can be found by other students. For instance, if you put your solutions in a public git repository and mark it accordingly, you're simply helping other students cheat. In particular, you're creating temptation for the Brown students, who are doing this for a grade. Please be thoughtful and mindful in your actions.

Timeliness

We can't accommodate delays. You may be a busy professional, but all our other students are busy too, and so are we! If you can't make deadlines, you should consider shifting to a lower level of certification, or dropping. Please don't ask us for deadline extensions.

Cheating

Even though you are not formally a Brown student, you must adhere to our honesty policy.

In short: Don't cheat. Also: We're not going to spend a lot of effort policing you, but we are going to spend some, and if we catch you, you'll be expelled.

Discussion

While you shouldn't cheat, you can and should discuss. It may be in person (there will be study-groups in some cities), or it may be on-line. Either way, good discussion asks questions; bad discussion supplies answers. That is, the way you can most help someone is not by giving them an answer but by leading them to discover the answer for themselves, and the way to do that is to figure out where they're stuck and get them un-stuck with an appropriate question.

Respecting Others

Please respect others. Be gentle even when correcting them (respect their efforts), be nice (respect their feelings), don't post frivolously (respect their time), etc. If we see what we regard as excessive abuse, and you won't curb it, we'll have to expell you.

Above all, we have zero tolerance for any form of discrimination. This is not a place to air your views on nationalities, cultures, sexes, religions, sexual orientations, etc.

Contacting Staff

As you will have noticed, this course has several undergraduate teaching assistants. Please do not contact them. They are not paid to deal with the on-line course, and they have full-time studies that keep them busy. Please limit your questions to forums. (Sidebar: In case you're wondering, most teaching assistants at Brown computer science are undergrads; the PhD students spend most of their time funded to do research. This works out better for everyone.)

If you absolutely must (e.g., your question is of a very private nature), you can write to Joe and me. Please send one message to both of us, instead of sending the same message twice: that way, when one of us replies the other does not need to. Indeed, if you write to only one of us and not the other, we will ignore it, to discourage you from doing this. (The obvious exception is if the message to one pertains to the other person.) In case you're wondering, this is essentially the same rule we ask our own Brown students to follow.