[Noisebridge-discuss] Friends of Noisebridge photo wall and "greylisting" ideas

[Liz Henry]

Hey there,

People have been talking about various ideas about banning and 
greylisting and being do-ocratic and so on. While I'm not up to 
summarizing all those conversations, I wanted to mention them on the 
list so they would be in public.

One idea that has come up is "greylisting" which probably needs a better 
name. Kick as opposed to "ban". The idea is that if people in the space 
end up asking a person to leave, they should ask them to leave and not 
come back until the next meeting night or to join the mailing list if 
they can't make the meeting. That would in theory function as a 
cooling-off period. This assumes that people aren't asking others to 
leave in trivial or annoying situations or in a bullying way, but doing 
it because of safety or people who are being extremely disruptive. 
People have been describing it as an option people should know is a 
possibility (not as a procedure that must be followed.)

It might be a good pattern if the people who did the do-ocratic 
greylisting (or temporary kicking out or asking to leave or whatever we 
end up calling it)  identify themselves.  To kick someone you are 
putting yourself on the line and if you do it all the time you might 
look like an authoritarian asshole (generally disapproved of at 
Noisebridge).  Putting their own social credibility on the line should 
discourage people from kicking for frivolous reasons.   In cases where 
people are afraid of direct retaliation or need to be private they will 
need to find proxies to do the kicking.

Another idea was making a sort of "welcome to noisebridge" wall or 
bulletin board that has people's photos, near the entrance. The idea has 
come up before. I think the point would be to represent people who want 
to identify themselves as part of Noisebridge, and that it might be 
welcoming or friendly (as well as useful to nerdy people who forget each 
others' names.)

Tonight I took a bunch of photos of people in the space, getting 
permission from them to print them and put them up on the wall in the 
entry area as Friends of Noisebridge. They might not be the best photos 
but I'll try to arrange them on the wall in a way that makes it clear 
that anyone can add new photos to it.  I took photos of about 40 people 
tonight and think the Friends of Noisebridge wall will be pretty awesome.

I hope we can come up with guidelines or patterns/antipatterns that 
don't piss everyone off and that don't get applied stupidly or used as 
Rules or with the sort of self-important pearl-clutching scapegoating 
bullshit that lots of people are afraid might happen.



- lizzard











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Liz Henry
liz at bookmaniac.org
http://bookmaniac.org

"Without models, it's hard to work; without a context, difficult to
evaluate; without peers, nearly impossible to speak." -- Joanna Russ