[Noisebridge-discuss] dealing with a troubled young lady? Discuss it on today's member meeting?

Josh Myer josh at joshisanerd.com
Thu Aug 12 06:49:21 UTC 2010


On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 11:04 PM, Sai Emrys <noisebridge at saizai.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 4:19 PM, meredith scheff <satiredun at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > If this was the first (or hell, 10th) time I was here, I wouldn't want to
> > come back.
>
> I think that behavior that you'd describe that way falls under what I
> said earlier as "acceptable norms of social behavior we mandate of NB
> visitors". Whether the behavior is psychiatrically motivated or not is
> irrelevant, IMO; that's part of the whole point of social contract.
>
> So, what can we take away from this as expected standards of behavior
> past which point we would be comfortable evicting/barring someone
> because they are being too much of an annoyance to others?
>
>
Common sense applies.  It's served us well in the past, and seems to be
handling the current situation reasonably well, though not as quickly as we
might like.

Longer version:

Do the obvious thing, which comes naturally to most people.  When you get
annoyed enough to bring it up, and enough people agree that it's a good
idea, talk to the person.  If they're intransigent, belligerent, or
otherwise uncooperative, escalate as you see necessary.  Ping people you
respect on IRC (assuming anyone can retain their respect while using that
medium), SMS, etc, if you're not sure.  If things continue to be problematic
and it comes to it, call the cops.  Ideally, don't invite the police into
the space unless you need to, since it keeps both our and their lives
simpler, but don't compromise safety for this ideal.  We don't actually have
any secrets, we just don't want to be inconvenienced by needing to prove it.

We had a bunch of meetings around this sort of thing at 83c, and the
eventual conclusion was that noisebridgers are smart enough to know when
common sense works.  Some of us are less on top of the social norms, but
that's okay, there's usually someone who's well-socialized in the space at
all times.  If you can deal with the problem by talking to the person,
great, if not, and it's the kind of thing where it really has to stop (eg:
going to violate the "Don't Burn Down Noisebridge" constraint), call the
police.
--
/jbm
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-discuss/attachments/20100811/5b29f0a7/attachment-0003.html>


More information about the Noisebridge-discuss mailing list