[Noisebridge-discuss] thefts at noisebridge / access policy

[Felipe Sanches]

At Garoa Hacker Clube in São Paulo, Brazil, we have a policy of
letting anybody (even non-members) use the space as long as there's a
member around. When the last member leaves, everybody's got to leave
and the doors are closed. (we have a system in our webpage that
publicly informs whether the space is currently open or closed - based
on a switch installed in our main entrance door)

It works pretty well in terms of being open to the overall community
while keeping it reasonably safe. We had only one case of theft and
people later figured out that our calipers had actually been stolen by
a member who left the club (stopped being a member) after some drama
and apparently decided to steal the calipers as an act of violence
towards us. We figured out it was him because a few months later the
exact same calipers showed up in a photo on facebook of an arduino
workshop he's been organizing.

So, yes, you may still have theft incidents involving members, but it
is far less likely than when you're open to having non-members alone
in the space.

Felipe Sanches

On Sat, Oct 20, 2012 at 12:22 PM, Ben Kochie <superq at gmail.com> wrote:
> The culture changed drastically a long time ago.  We used to have a policy
> of having non-members leave when nobody was  around.
>
> I'm sorry to say it, but noisebridge was created for the membership, not for
> random out of town people.
>
> I do not want the policy to be "we can't have nice things" and I'm thinking
> it's time we as members simply close the door and reset the policy back to
> the original configuration of being closed to non-members outside of event
> hours.
>
> On Oct 18, 2012 11:13 PM, "Corey McGuire" <coreyfro at coreyfro.com> wrote:
>>
>> I'd hate to say it, but I have just adopted a, "This is why we can't have
>> nice things, and I am OK with that" Policy at noisebridge.
>>
>> There is just nothing that can be done at Noisebridge that will change
>> this that will not drastically change the culture.
>>
>> So, what I recommend is, guard your stuff, take it home, and don't bring
>> quality items to leave at noisebridge.
>>
>> If we just have crap tools at noisebridge...not broken, but cheap, there
>> will be less theft and it won't be so hard to recover after something goes
>> missing.
>>
>> One serious note, yeah, we have a lock picking class, and people often use
>> this to discourage locking anything...but maybe it's time to start locking
>> things.  I don't care how hard it is...or how trivial it is...to unlock
>> something, but at least it removes, with out a doubt, that something is not
>> meant to be share.  Lockers at noisebridge wouldn't be such a bad idea.
>>
>> Also, lets revisit the tote idea instead of shelf idea.  I think that
>> would be a better barrier to theft and mess/disorganization and make the
>> "member shelves" more useful for more people.
>>
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>
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