[Noisebridge-discuss] door

[Garrett Mace]

On 1/17/2013 3:27 PM, John Withers wrote:
> On Thu, 2013-01-17 at 13:57 -0800, johny radio wrote:
>> Your solution seems based on the assumption that whomever gave access
>> to the bad actor is a collaborator. That may be true in some cases,
>> but surely not most.
> I think what Jake's pretty smart thinking here does is force us to start
> taking some responsibility for our community and the people entering
> into it and is proposing one of the only workable ways I have heard so
> far to do this.
>
> Look around NB, Johny, see a lot of the female hackers that were there a
> while ago? Where did they all go? Is there a convention somewhere else?
> What has been stated by many people and while I don't personally
> experience it, being male and all, I believe completely, is that NB has
> become even more hostile and dangerous to women than is average in the
> tech nerd community (which already has huge and well known issues in
> this area). This is because we don't take responsibility for our
> community and who is in it.
>
> We can't have nice things. This has been belabored in recent
> conversations over and over and in waves since the dawn of NB time. Why
> can't we have nice things? Why do hardware hackers realize we can't work
> on any project we can't carry in and out of the space because if we
> leave anything on our shelves, no matter how esoteric, there is a 50%
> chance it is going to disappear? Because we don't take responsibility
> for our community and who is in it.
>
> Jake's thinking here isn't the solution to the problems of our community,
> but it sure looks to me like a step in the right direction.
>
> -john

Might not be tactful to lament the lack of women and say "we can't have 
nice things." ;) I know that's not what you meant.

You have to decide what kind of space you want to be. At the other end 
of the scale is TechShop. If you don't have a paid membership and RFID 
card, you don't get in. You're on camera in many of the areas, and it is 
recorded. You can't leave stuff lying around overnight unless you've 
rented member storage. All of these things create a fairly safe and 
focused environment to work on things, and you can claim a work table 
and leave your laptop on it for hours with little fear of it being 
stolen. Most of the large power equipment requires a somewhat expensive 
training class to use. There are punitive measures if you check out 
equipment and leave it dirty or do something really stupid and damage 
it. Moderately expensive consumables, from CNC tool kits to drill bits, 
are checked out of an equipment cage. Therefore most equipment is kept 
in clean and usable condition, and is either available or you know when 
it will be available.

There are staff on site whose word is law, if anything untoward is 
happening. There is also central heat.

So...they're making it work. It costs members a lot of money to keep it 
that way.

Noisebridge and other hackerspaces are comparative anarchy, which can be 
a good thing, but there should be a point of balance between TechShop 
and leaving things unattended in a dark alley. It takes some 
responsibility and *don't-ocracy* to achieve that, without excluding 
good people and drowning out the informal atmosphere that TechShop can't 
have.