Thank you for joining our community! We hope you’ll like it here.
DataTalks.Club is a place to talk, learn, discuss, and share. To make our discussion more organized, we need to follow community guidelines.
Table of contents:
- Code of conduct
- Channels
- Taking part in discussions
- Asking for help
- Promoting your product and content
- Jobs
Code of conduct
Be respectful and remember that there’s a human on the other side of the screen. We do not have our own code of conduct, but we follow the Python Software Foundation one. Please read the “Inappropriate Behavior” section.
Some examples of inappropriate behaviour:
- Judging the question or the person asking the question (“this is a stupid questions and everyone who can read docs knows the answer”)
- Soliciting any kind of personal information (such as marital status, sexual orientation, phone number, address, income, etc)
- Continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease
Channels
Use channels when possible. For example, instead of using #general for asking a question about machine learning, use #datascience.
Default channels:
#announcements— for community-wide announcements#general— for general discussions#events— for sharing interesting events (including events that you organize)#interesting-content— for sharing interesting content (blog posts, videos, etc - including your own content)#shameless-social— for promoting your posts on social media#shameless-promotion— for promoting other things that don’t fit into the three cateries above
(see the promotion section for more information about promoting your work)
Other channels:
#book-of-the-week– to talk about books with book authors (check the books page for more information)#career-questions– for career discussions (switching from one role to something data-related, being better at work, etc)#datascience– for talking about data science, machine learning, algorithms, training process, and ml-related libraries#engineering– for discussing the engineering aspects of data science: data engineering, ML engineering, MLOps, and so on#events– to talk about events (not just our events, but events in other communities as well)#jobs– for jobs#random– for chit-chat about pretty much anything
This is not a complete list of channels. To check the list of all the available channels, use this: https://slack.com/intl/en-de/help/articles/205239967-Join-a-channel
Taking part in discussions
- Do not double post — select the best channel for your message and post it only once.
- Avoid asking questions in DM. If you ask your question in a public channel, others will also benefit from the answers.
- Use threads. They help to keep the discussions more organized.
Thread best practices:
- Don’t break your question into multuple messages. Put everything in one.
- For long questions, write a few sentences in the first message, and put the rest in a thread.
- If there’s a code snippet (more than 5 lines of code), put it inside the thread.
- Avoid using the “also send to channel” feature unless it’s really necessary.
- If your question contains multiple questions, make sure to break them into multiple messages, so each could be answered in a separate thread.
Some other tips:
- If you want to start a discussion, don’t just share a link and expect others to jump in. Share your thoughs and have a clear question in your message.
- “Any thoughts on this?” is not a clear question.
- Be consice in your questions if possible. Not everyone likes to read a lot of text.
- Don’t delete your question after you received an answer. It will also help others who might have a similar problem.
Asking for help
If you get stuck, our Slack is the right place to ask for help. To make it easier to help you, please follow these suggestions.
Avoid meta questions
Avoid meta-questions. Meta questions are questions about asking questions. Don’t ask to ask, just ask.
Examples:
- Can I ask a question about data science here?
- Yes, you can! That’s the reason this Slack exists!
- Is there anyone who knows marketing? I have a question about it.
- Yes. Just ask your question about marketing - or anything else - directly.
- Has anyone done Machine Learning Zoomcamp? I have a question about it.
- Just ask the question. If somebody has done it, they’ll answer.
- The same applies to books and anything else.
Code problems and errors
When something doesn’t work and you need help figuring it out, we’ll be happy to help. Please follow these recommendations:
- Use threads. When you have a problem, first describe the problem shortly and then put the actual error in the thread - so it doesn’t take the entire screen.
- Don’t take screenshots of your code or terminal. Instead, it’s better to copy-paste the error you’re getting in text. Use ` ``` ` for formatting your code. It’s very difficult to read text from screenshots.
- Please don’t take pictures of your code with a phone. It’s even harder to read. Follow the previous suggestion, and in rare cases when you need to show what happens on your screen, take a screenshot.
Homework help
In general, we’d be happy to help with your homework, provided that you show genuine effort from your side and you are clear about the source of your question.
A few suggestions:
- Don’t just copy-paste an exercise and expect others to jump in and solve it for you. If you do it, don’t be surprised if nobody answers.
- To increase your chances of getting an answer, consult this answer from StackOverflow.
The same applies to interview take-home assignments. We’re happy to help, but be transparent about it.
Promotion
Promoting your work is welcome — for both companies and individuals. We have a few special channels for that:
#events— for sharing events that you organize#interesting-content— for sharing content you create (blogs, videos, podcasts, etc)#shameless-social— for promoting your posts on social media#shameless-promotion— for promoting other things
To make sure the content you share is useful for the community members, we ask you to follow shameless post templates.
Don’t use other channels for promoting your work. They will be removed without a warning and repeated violations will result in a ban.
Frequency of posts
Spamming Slack communities with content hoping to get clicks is not the best strategy. It feels spammy and reduces the values of your posts. If you post too often, it’ll just be ingnored.
Therefore we ask you to limit your promotions to two posts per week per channel (one of the four above).
Surveys, product discovery and feedback on your product
Messages that ask the community for feedback on your product are considered promotional as well
and should be posted in #shameless-promotion
Examples:
- We’re conducting a survey to better understand how people use
____. - We’d like to show you our product and get some feedback from you.
- We’re working on
____and would like to talk to data scientsits and ML engineers to understand better their painpoints. - We’re working on a tool to do
____and we’re wondering if it’s useful.
User and product research questions are also considered promotional.
Rules for vendors
If you represent a company, indicate your affiliation if you suggest using your services when answering questions.
Unsolicited promotions
We do not welcome unsolicited promotional messages in DM. Violating it will result in a ban.
Instead, use the #shameless-promotion channel, and if somebody is interested in your product or service,
they will reach out to you.
If you get unsolicited promotional messages in DM, report it to Alexey Grigorev.
Note that promoting yourself and your services is also a promotion. For example, mass-sending your CVs in DMs is also considered unsolicited promotion, and the same rules apply.
Non-relevant promotions
The promotional content must be relevant for the community. It should be related to data. If it’s not relevant, don’t post it.
Examples of content not relevant for this community:
- COVID surveys for $5
- Coupon codes for lawn mowers or pizzas
- Photoshop alternatives
- Databases with contact information
- Tools for sales
- Wellness apps
Such messages will be removed without a warning
Jobs
If you’re looking for colleagues, use the #jobs channel.
To make it easier for others to judge if a position is relevant for them, please mention:
- City / Country
- Relocation support
- Possibility to work remotely
And don’t forget to include contact details and the link to the job description :)
Since we’re a data community, please make sure the positions are related to data or to software development.
Examples of relevant positions:
- Data/product analyst
- Data scientist
- Machine learning engineer
- Data engineer
- Analytics engineer
- Developer advocate
- Software engineer / Python developer
Examples of not relevant positions:
- Accountants and bookkeepers