[Noisebridge-discuss] microscope has been found

Tue Dec 6 03:32:27 UTC 2011

I concur with Jake's perspective on this and there is no wrong done to him
that merits an apology/invitation to return to Noisebridge.

Unless I'm mistaken, this wasn't first "sprung on him" in a full public
meeting.  Did you not speak to him privately prior to the meeting and
record it, as you did me??  At least 3 points-- including in the full
public meeting-- you repeatedly asked me.

Specifically, I am thinking of the 1:1 conversation we had in the stairwell
literally right as the meeting was starting.  That was disturbing and I
quote from the notes I made immediately afterwards:

 "Duncan, some people, including Jay, think that you stole it and are
trying to frame him.  I've spoken to both of you both are really quite
convincing.   This could come out looking very bad for you if you can't say
you saw something without any doubt.  What is the problem?  Did YOU steal
the microscope?  If you did, just return it and this will be all behind us."

I asked you what you wanted me to do, you shrugged saying everything turned
on what I said, and I said well, that's easy, I tell the truth, and
reminded you there were 1001 other behaviors meriting his ban.  I did,
though, underestimate his ability to elicit sympathy and guilt.

I don't feel like you have any need to apologize to me for asking
reasonable questions based on circumstances.  And I absolutely believe any
apology to Jay is not only unwarranted, but-- as Jake points out
correctly-- ill-advised.

The microscope was the tip of the iceberg and, IMHO, what ultimately KEPT
HIM from being banned.  Do people not remember Kayla's laptop, his angry
paranoid arguments with non-existent people then projected onto others, or
his threat to harm me?

The system worked and, if at all, erred in the direction of his favor.  The
man is a brilliant con artist and, thankfully, no longer at or welcome at
Noisebridge.

I'm very unclear on why you feel guilty, particularly as this cost us huge
time and energy and resulted in a sort of amenable truce.  There is nothing
to second guess or re-hash here, set yourself free!  My 2 cents: You did
the right thing; Let it be and move forward.

I hope you can find this peace, you deserve it, Danny.

On Dec 5, 2011, at 4:42 PM, Danny O'Brien <danny at spesh.com> wrote:

On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 2:42 PM, Jake <jake at spaz.org> wrote:

> I am being entirely honest with myself by posting what I did and nothing
> more.  I stand by my previous statement that jay did several things that
> by themselves would warrant a ban.  It did not seem that anyone disagreed
> with me, although people had differing  methods of keeping him away.
>

Well, I thought so too. I am reconsidering this, though. I am spending some
time thinking about what the other things were, and how we knew about them.
No real conclusions, but I think we should think about the whole course of
events. I am definitely in a post-mortem mood though.

>
> You say you think we screwed up, by what?  Asking someone if they had
> stolen something that we suspected they took and sold?  We didn't call the
> police and have him arrested, we didn't confiscate his laptop in payment,
> we didn't etc etc him.  I glared at him, but he deserved it.
>
>

We questioned him for a long time. We raised the accusation at a meeting. A
lot of people thought he stole the microscope, on the basis of evidence
that we tried to verify, but insufficiently qualify. I think we screwed up.
It might be that we would have made the same mistake whatever we did, but
I'd like to go back and go over it to see if we can both try not to make
false accusations of theft in the future, and also limit the damage of such
false accusations. I don't know whether that's possible, but I'd like to
talk about it.

> you say:
> > We should also talk about this at the meeting. Some of our systems for
> > preventing this kind of mistake worked, and some of them didn't, and we
> > can always improve them.
>
> I disagree.  What mistake did we make?  If accusing someone of something
> they didn't do is a mistake, you better start working for the Innocence
> Project because there are people in jail for decades for things they
> didn't do.  THAT is a mistake.
>
>
I do actually think accusing somebody of something they didn't do is a
mistake. I think both of those things are mistakes, one of which is
obviously much worse than the other.

Do you really think accusing people of something they didn't do *isn't* a
mistake? If I accused you of stealing chickens, and it turned out that you
didn't steal the chickens, wouldn't you expect me to apologise for the
chicken-stealing rumor?

I am weirded out by your position, and assume it's some sort of
misunderstanding caused by email. Let's talk about it in person some time.

(Maybe your position is more like: we didn't really *accuse* him, we just
asked him about it, and asking somebody about something is never a mistake.
I'd definitely agree with the second bit there. Maybe what I am looking for
is a way we can ask people about such things, without it turning into
something that seems like an accusation. For instance, we kind of sprung
the questions on him in the full public meeting. I don't know, maybe that
wasn't the right way to do it.)

> I have said that apparently Jay didn't take our microscope, but I also
> think that any microscope being sold on a blanket on the sidewalk of the
> castro probably didn't wind up there voluntarily.
>

I think there wasn't actually a microscope and that that was back-projected
into the story. I wouldn't raise this now but it is definitely the part of
your email that prompted me to respond. It read to me like we were saying
"oh it turned out that you were stealing an entirely different person's
microscope! sorry!" instead of "we thought you were a thief, and actually
we have no evidence for that".

>
> You say you're getting ready to send an apology to Jay through email.  I
> was specifically told (by you) not to email Jay unless I wanted him to
> come back to the space.  Unless you think the things he DID do were fine,
> and you've got a cure for whatever is ailing him and Jorgen,  I ask that
> you let things be and keep the number of dangerous wingnuts down for now.
>
>
Huh, did I say that (the sutff about not mailing him)? Then I was wrong to
say that -- I don't think I have the right to tell anyone to do anything.
I'm really sorry if that's what I said, or even that that's what conclusion
you drew from what I said.

I am however pretty chicken (non-stolen) about emailing him, and despite
feeling bad about what we did, I am more likely to comply with your request
and not mail him, because I like you a lot more.

> There was a wiki page for things that have gone missing, maybe you
> created it, and the microscope was on there.  That page is totally
> missing, i can't find it with a search.
>
>
https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/MissingStuff

Thank you for replying. I don't really want to keep banging on about this
on nb-discuss, because I feel that these things are sorted out more quickly
and less acrimoniously in person, and also I still would like to talk about
it all in the meeting. That's not me shutting this down, just me trying to
publicly steady myself so that I won't reply to your imminent reply to my
reply. Which I probably will anyway. It's the nature of noisedrama!

d.

> -jake
>
> Danny O'Brien wrote:
>
> On Mon, Dec 5, 2011 at 2:56 AM, Jake <jake at spaz.org> wrote:
>
> > a while ago it seemed that a certain person had stolen it, because
> > someone thought they had seen that person selling a microscope on the
> > street and we noticed it was missing.  It seems that person must have
> > been selling a different stolen microscope, because it apparently wasn't
> > this one.
>
> I appreciate you posting this, when you could have also just not said
> anything publicly on the list. But I don't think you're being entirely
> honest with yourself or others when you give that as the most likely
> conclusion.
>
> I think being suddenly vague about who it was that was accused and who did
> the accusing, and then concluding that, well, heck, the only explanation
> must be that the possibly-imaginary microscope must have been stolen from
> someone *else*, is just compounding the earlier error. We have to be as
> honest as we can with ourselves.
>
> Here's how I would describe what happened:
>
> "a while ago a lot of us believed that Jay had stolen it, because Duncan
> thought they had seen that person selling something from Noisebridge on
> the street and we noticed the microscope was missing.  We screwed up,
> probably because lots of us were mad at Jay for another reason entirely."
>
> If we're not honest about the mistakes we made, we're going to risk
> repeating them. People find themselves mobbing someone they don't like or
> who did something wrong with lots of extra accusations, and talking
> themselves into believing the worst of them.
>
> I'm personally trying to work myself up to apologizing to Jay -- we all
> have his email address.
>
> We should also talk about this at the meeting. Some of our systems for
> preventing this kind of mistake worked, and some of them didn't, and we
> can always improve them.
>
> d.
>
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