The Sparkden
Code of Conduct.

You're reading the rules for how we treat each other inside the Sparkden community. It exists for three reasons:

1. To set the floor for how we talk to each other — so people with very different backgrounds, ages, and styles can still build together.
2. To give us a way to handle conflict when it shows up. It will. That's normal.
3. To make sure Sparkden stays a place anyone can walk into, whatever school, country, or first language they came from.

We're cool with healthy disagreement and direct feedback. We are not cool with being rude. Different opinions are welcome here; mean ones aren't.

Things we expect of each other when we show up in this community.

• Be friendly. Assume the person on the other side of the screen is younger than you, doing this for the first time, and typing in their second or third language. Sometimes they will be.
• Be patient. Most of the people in this community are still learning. So are you. So are we.
• Be thoughtful. What you type stays in the channel forever. Read it once more before you hit send — “just kidding” doesn't undo something cruel.
• Be respectful, especially when you disagree. “That's a bad idea” is fine. “You're stupid for thinking that” isn't.
• Be charitable. When something sounds off, assume the most reasonable version of it. Ask before you fight.
• Be constructive. Don't only complain. Offer how to fix it — or at least ask if someone else has an idea.
• Be responsible. Your words and your code have consequences. If you broke something, own it and help fix it.
• Help when you can. The whole reason this place works is older builders showing up for newer ones.

Sparkden is a welcoming community. That means we draw the line at things that make other people not want to be here. Specifically:

• Harassment, insults, slurs, or threats — in public or in DMs. Period.
• Sexualized language, imagery, or unwanted advances. This is a community with minors in it. Don't.
• Doxxing — sharing someone's real name, address, school, photo, or any personal info they didn't post themselves.
• Trolling, brigading, or following someone around to harass them.
• Hate aimed at someone's identity — race, religion, gender, sexuality, disability, neurodivergence, body, accent, country, anything.
• Impersonating someone else, including pretending to be staff.
• Spam, scams, sketchy drops, phishing, or recruiting people into shady stuff.
• Other conduct that would be inappropriate in any normal community space.

SparkCloud and our other services are free. They're funded by people who believe in giving teenagers real infrastructure. Don't make us regret it. The full list lives in our Acceptable Use Policy — the highlights:

• No cryptocurrency mining. It costs more power than your projects justify, slows the platform for everyone, and gets your account banned.
• No DDoS, port scanning, brute-forcing, or attacks of any kind, against anyone — outside or inside the community.
• No hosting malware, phishing pages, or stolen content on your containers, spaces, or subdomains.
• No CSAM, ever. This is the one rule with no second chance. We remove and report immediately, with no warning.
• No reselling our infrastructure, repackaging free resources as a paid service, or running multiple accounts to dodge limits.
• No piracy — don't host or distribute content you don't have rights to.
• No automated mass abuse — scraping against terms, unsolicited email, fake-traffic-ing other services.

If you're not sure whether something's allowed, ask before you ship it. We'd rather answer a question than ban an account.

This community works because the kids who've been here a while show up for the kids who just arrived.

• If someone asks a question you know the answer to, answer it — even if it feels obvious. It wasn't obvious when you started.
• Don't gatekeep. “Just google it” is the worst answer in this community.
• When you fix a bug or figure something out, write it down where the next person can find it.
• If you see someone being treated badly, say something — or message a maintainer if it's bigger than that.
• If a newer builder asks for help in public, help in public. Public answers help everyone reading along.

We don't think all conflict is bad — healthy disagreement is how this place gets better. But being cruel is bad, and we deal with it.

If somebody is making Sparkden worse to be in, you have two options:

1. Talk to them directly. A lot of stuff is just a misunderstanding and resolves in five minutes.
2. Report them to a maintainer. Do this for harassment, threats, doxxing, platform abuse, or anything that makes you feel unsafe. You don't have to try option 1 first.

Reports go to conduct@sparkden.org — or message a staff member directly in our community spaces.

We read every report. We talk to the person being reported before any decision. We keep the reporter's name out of it where we can. Outcomes range from a quiet word, to a warning, to a temporary mute, to a permanent ban. If someone is in danger, we act first and explain afterward.

The Sparkden Code of Conduct covers:

• Our chat, forum, and any official community space.
• Our GitHub — issues, code review, pull requests, discussions.
• Anywhere you're representing The Spark Forward Foundation — a community handle, an event, a hackathon.
• Your activity on Spark services (SparkCloud, Spark Account, and anything else we run), including what you host on them.

If you do something outside of all that which materially harms someone in this community or the project, we still reserve the right to act on it.

If you're a parent, teacher, administrator, or club lead landing here: this is the document that governs how teenagers behave inside our spaces. If your kid was treated badly, or you think we got something wrong, email conduct@sparkden.org and a real person will write back.

If you're a minor reading this and something on this page worries you, you can also reach out to a trusted adult before contacting us. That's not weakness — it's the right call.

1. Treat people with respect and kindness.
2. Help newer builders when you can.
3. Don't abuse the platform — no mining, no malware, no DDoS, no CSAM.
4. If something's wrong, email conduct@sparkden.org.

Adapted from the Go Community Code of Conduct and the Contributor Covenant v1.4, both published under permissive terms. Modified for Sparkden, where most of the community is under twenty-one.

Version 2026-06-02 · Last updated June 2, 2026