[Noisebridge-discuss] Advisory about recent thefts at Noisebridge.

Mon Jul 11 22:11:38 UTC 2011

I'm going to reply inline

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 8:48 AM, girlgeek <girlgeek at wt.net> wrote:
> Adding my 2 cents.
>
> I second the suggestion of 10AM to 10PM (or earlier) open hours -  10PM to
> 10AM - 'members' only please.    I put 'members' in quotes because we can be
> very liberal in what we consider a member for these purposes.
> We might consider a $5/visit donation requirement which we can  forget to
> ask of anyone who looks O.K.
> We might consider a $2/visit donation of anyone who isn't a true monthly
> paying member and solve some financial problems at the same time.

all of these solutions require us to do some kind of vague but active
people sorting, filtering, demanding money, closing the doors or
kicking out of nonmembers.  i mean, what happens at 10pm?  who stands
up and kicks out all those people we have spent two years telling that
they can come in and work whenever they want?  Or do we just want to
kick out problem people?  i fail to see how that differs from saying
"let's kick out problem people" except for the second is far more
honest.

> We might consider a lock on the upstairs door that opens with the same key
> or keypad as downstairs, but otherwise has to be opened by someone who
> greets - and tells strangers to go away after 10PM.

i like this better.  i also like the keypad/simply no longer buzzing
people in solution, i think it's similar in effect.  I also would like
to propose a similar solution: a passphrase.  to get buzzed in you
must deliver the passphrase.  it could be distributed via wiki,
mailing list, whatever.  i like the password over the keypad solution
because i believe it has the same level of filter but more fun in
implementation, and less work up-front to implement it it would
require a greater behavioral change, but that might be a good thing.
training people to have a small interaction with others to allow the
others to enter could be a step in the right direction.

> I like, "What are you here to work on?" as a filter of people.  We need an
> acceptable response for Free School people like, "I'm part of the Free
> School." but otherwise, anyone coming in who doesn't look right shouldn't be
> here without a project.

Um, fuck the free school.  I am sure that many of them are nice people
but they have several spaces nearby they can use for their chanting
circles/massage parties/talking about hippie stuff/whatever and being
part of Free School is not a reason to hang out at noisebridge.

working on creative technology projects is.

>
> A slightly different aspect of the problem.  Say someone unexcellent  comes
> in.....
>
> It is only a small % of us that feel that we can ask them to leave.  We need
> some sort of social  ok or awareness that especially as long as this problem
> exists that we need to err on the side of asking people to leave, an we all
> need to work as a group on the problem when an unexcellent person comes in.
> And   it can be very difficult to get the idea across to someone crazy,
> stoned, or crazy stoned that they need to leave.  Remember when we asked
> Salvador Dali Lama to leave - daily.
>
> Avoiding theft means asking a suspected thief to leave, before they have
> done anything wrong.  This means that we must act on our 'bad feeling about
> someone'.   Are we all willing to do that?

we must as a community come up with some tools to help us know when we
can and should ask people to leave, and to help us know how to do it
without being an asshole or unfairly targeting someone we don't know
or who is different from ourselves.

R.