This outlines the requirements for participating in our Envato Local Community Program as a Leader and Member, in-person and online.
Envato is a community of creatives who come together to share ideas and help each other succeed. We invite you to join in, but do have a few rules to follow. The rules and values (below) exist to help you understand what it means to be a member of the community and specifically cover community interactions within our community groups.
We’re committed to making sure that these values are upheld and that our community feels safe and happy to be a part of it. As a member in our community, we hope you will be too.
1. We believe when the community succeeds, we succeed.
We love healthy competition, but feel we’re all better off when we’re sharing ideas, knowledge and skills and helping one another. We come to give back, not shamelessly self-promote. A large part of our community is centered around learning and education by engaging with your peers.
We ask that you always respect all community members and give each other space to ask, advise, support and grow.
2. We’re a global community of many types of people.
We are from all corners of the earth and a glorious melting pot of creative fields, skill levels, cultures, religions and more. We think the opportunity for anyone to achieve success no matter where they come from, leads to a more meritocratic and equal world.
We are proud of this diversity and believe that this is one of the greatest rewards of being an Envato author. We also believe in the value of relationship-building across different regions, as well as investing time within your own local communities.
Being able to connect with both global and local perspectives are an important part of making sure our community members feel comfortable and have access to local resources (especially those from non-english speaking backgrounds), those who prefer different learning/engaging styles (you can be an introvert and be a part of this community too!) and those who want to look outside of their region for collaboration and learning.
3. We celebrate individuality and embrace diversity.
We encourage different viewpoints as long as they’re presented in a way that’s constructive and respectful. Personal attacks, as well as any behavior that is hateful or offensive based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender or sexual orientation are not okay. This will not be tolerated and Community Leaders and Mediators will take action when this happens.
4. We’re excited and inspired by global and local collaborations.
By collaborating with people from different backgrounds and industries, we are exposed to new ideas and perspectives that fuel the creative process and innovation. We are excited to see what connections you can from with people from around the world, as well as with those in your local regions (but perhaps haven’t had a chance to meet yet)!
5. We’re always learning because we’re hungry and curious, so share it!
We’re all students and teachers. Our world moves super fast and we stay ahead of the pack by pushing and pulling each other forward. We don’t follow the trends, we make them.
We want you to know and feel that this local community is yours - its a safe and helpful space that should reflect you and your peers. We want you to shine and be yourself. If you have ideas, advice and specialist knowledge in your field that you think would be valuable, we want to hear them.
6. We believe all ideas can (and should) be challenged, constructively - when it’s needed or requested.
We value and preserve the right to challenge each other (for the benefit of learning) within our community group, but that criticism must always be directed at ideas (never people or groups), and be delivered in a way that is respectful and constructive.
One of the most rewarding parts of being involved in a community is also the advice, support and feedback fellow authors can provide each other on their portfolio/items or strategy. However, it’s also an area that can be difficult to manage and/or sensitive as it deals with feedback that could potentially offend another person.
Here, we have created a section on best practices for portfolio takedowns/critiques if your community chooses to do this.
- Give and take! If you receive helpful feedback, make sure to do that for others and offer recommendations. This part of the activity will thrive only if people contribute to it.
- Be sure to share something the person is doing well, even if you also share a suggestion for how they might improve.
- If you’re sharing thoughts on how an author might improve, do so in a thoughtful, friendly way. How might you like to hear a similar suggestion? And always be respectful. Don't use community spaces or feedback activities to publicly disparage a specific member, portfolio or item(s).
- As with any part of the Envato Community, be sure to follow our rules and guidelines.
7. We help each other at the good and bad times (and everything life-related in-between).
If you see, hear or read something that does not adhere to our community guidelines, then it is your responsibility as a community member to de-escalate the situation and take action to ensure it is a safe supportive space.
Community Rules
As part of joining this community group, you must not engage in the following activities:
- Participate in or encourage personal and/or group attacks, purposely disrupting the conversation, being aggressively critical without being constructive or calling out another user and/or sabotage a user’s item and shaming a community member for their ideas or contributions.
- Discuss politics, pornography, religion or competitive marketplaces.
- Link to freebies in categories of items that are sold on Market.
- Blatantly self-promote (see A Note on Self-promotion below).
- Distribute spam or solicit for any kind of material support, donations, aid, etc.
- Discuss pricing of items/services in an author-driven pricing category or on Studio.
- Talk about or link to piracy, warez, illegal activity of any kind, or competitor sites or items.
- Request or post personal (or identifying) information about any user or any other person.
- Post anything that would infringe on another person’s intellectual property rights.
A Note on Self-promotion
We see our community groups as being a key tool to kelp authors feel supported, connected and open new opportunities and ways of learning. So part of your role in being a community leader and member, is ensuring that authors do not utilize this platform as simply a way to self-promote with no regard for the rest of the community,
This is a give and take scenario, and we do not allow community members to constantly take. To that end, we permit self promotion of your Envato items in a context where it is clearly providing value to other community members. Such contexts might include:
- Engaging in topics where authors need to provide example (i.e their items) when providing advice/support
- Engaging in topics in which m members have expressed a desire for item recommendations or services.
Please note that the decision as to whether or not your self promotion is providing value and context appropriate is ultimately at the discretion of the Community Leaders and Moderators. If they feel your post or topic violates these guidelines, they reserve the right to remove it.