[Noisebridge-discuss] On Asking People To Leave (Was Re: Shawn L. )

[Danny O'Brien]

On Fri, Mar 08, 2013 at 03:34:44PM -0800, maestro wrote:
> ^ +1 justin...
> 
> ^  1st off, a blanket vague e-mail to the discuss list asking people (who were
> not involved in whatever this is) to accost someone in the space and try and
> tell them to leave without any documentation of an incident <in the space> or
> what the fuck it's about composed by someone who by appearances wasn't even
> involved in an incident with the subject(person) of the mail???
> 

Soooo I'm not actually requiring or ordering anyone to do this. If you
don't want to do it, that's fine. I realise that doing it without
knowing any background is kind of weird, but I'm happy to discuss it
with anyone in person, and I'm okay with you thinking it is all kind of
weird.

To clarify, one of the reasons why the Noisebridge tradition has emerged
over the last few years of asking people to leave and come back at
meeting is to defuse immediate situations. It doesn't mean anything more
than some matter has arisen that the people involved feel uncomfortable
handling on their own, and would rather discuss it with the wider
community.

It's not intended as a punishment. Indeed, if one feels outraged that
one will have to spend a maximum of seven days not at Noisebridge, I do
rather think one is probably making Noisebridge too much of your life,
and need a break anyway. 

I also strongly believe the following points represent a consensus
position at this point, although it isn't the sort of thing that we put
through official consensus, it's definitely something that fits with
what most of us do when we're doacratically handling these situations.

1. If you're in an argument with somebody that seems irresolvable and
looks like it's escalating, you or they should ask the other to leave
and come back to meeting. It's okay for both sides to do that, because
that gets the confrontation out of the space, and gives time for people
to calm down. 

2. It's considered excellent to leave and come to the meeting. It counts
in your favor.

3. Not leaving isn't excellent, because at that point at least one
person is stuck in an immediately intractable problem. 

4. Neither is it excellent to leave, and coming back before meeting. Nor
should thou take over an hour leaving and then hover around the gate,
very slowly picking up your laptop pieces, like with Junior that last
time.

5. It's almost certainly not excellent, incidentally, to try and game
this by just repeatedly asking people to leave and come back at the next
meeting, and then like two minutes after the meeting, ask them to leave
and come back to the next meeting, etc. There are many other exploits like
this that you can think of. Almost all of them fall under another
widely-held hackerspace axiom, "don't be a dick", and won't get you any
credit when you come to the meeting with a big grin on your face.
Indeed, you may find that the person who did the asking to leave will be
in far bigger disgrace than the person who left. This happens. A lot.

5. If you feel ABSOLUTELY outraged about being kicked out, come back at
meeting, and almost certainly other people will feel ABSOLUTELY OUTRAGED
on your behalf, or perhaps roll their eyes at what happened. It is a
good way to see how the rest of the community feels. It is very unlikely
that if you are asked to leave for a dumb reason that the rest of the
meeting will sympathise with the person telling you to leave. If they
do, perhaps your OUTRAGE was misplaced.

6. And yes you are part of a community, and your big "nobody tells *me*
what to do" isn't actually the anarchism we practice here. Otherwise you
could just turn the place into a satanic ice cream parlor and everyone
would be like woooo anarchy, which they would not. Well, maybe at first,
but then they would be like why are these arduinos vanilla flavored and
melting, and the crying would begin.

So that is what I think is our broad consensus. Now to go into more details
of your specific complaints:

/* *********************************************************************

> ^ and by someone whom isn't in charge of anyone or anything?
> 
> ^ wot?
> 
> ^ so; now in just the last month, 
> a) people have been harassed and told the police would be called on them whom
> were minding their own business and participating positively in an event at NB.
> 

A. What you mean here, Maestro, is that *you* were asked to leave,
because you were sitting in the middle of a packed Third Monday
Technoactivism event I was hosting, and we were clearing out tables so
that more people could sit comfortably and it ended up with many people
helping to clear out the tables except for the table you were sitting
at, because you refused to let anyone take it away from you, and you
glared at everyone, until eventually Tom (who is kind of cranky this
way) asked MCT to help deal with you, and MCT asked you to leave. Then
you were EVEN MORE OUTRAGED and started asking people whether they were
members, or whether their name was on the lease, like that mattered.

Then you asked me to come over and mediate, and lo I did sorely roll my
eyes, because you were actually pulling this tantrum right in the middle
of my meeting, and you were sat there with the only table like it was a
liferaft, and somehow I was supposed to sympathise with you, andI was
like "well, actually Maestro, maybe you *should* leave",and at this
point you pulled the BUT THIS IS ANARCHY and started shouting and
denying that you were shouting and so on and so forth. I mean, we can
take this to the high papal court and everything like Tom always wants
to, but I just thought, oh man Maestro, he sure knows how to write write his
emails like Bash comments, but boy he is sometimes a dick so let's leave
him there. And Tom was super-outraged, and we talked about it at
meeting, but ultimately I think we just put it down to you being a
grumpy fucker.

> b) someone else asked people to summon another person to a meeting to be asked
> to leave the space permanently WITHOUT said requester even attending the
> meeting,

B. Don't really know about this. It sometimes happens. The consequences
of such a travesty of justice that everyone rolls their eyes at meeting
and goes, sorry about that, X is kind of crazy. Where X is either the
person doing the summoning, or the crazy person being asked to leave. It
is usually down to craziness.

> 
> c) people have been going around the space whom are in charge of NOTHING
> 'trying' to tell people what to do.

9. So this one is kind of funny, because at the risk of working purely
off inaccurate hearsay, the big thing some people say about you Maestro
is that when you want people to do things, you pretend to call *me* on
your phone and then say okay I am talking to Danny who is an Important
Member, and he says to do THIS.

And it is a bit embarassing because the first time you did this,
obviously Reverend Mik later asked me if I had really said to you
Maestro that the Reverend Mik should throw everyone out of Turing except
you, and I said, no I don't even think Maestro has my number, how weird.

And after that, just FYI, people know that you don't even dial a number
on your phone and see you holding it to you head like you're talking to
someone and they just roll their eyes some more. It turns out that
actually we do talk to each other about your crazy antics.

Your modus operandi seems to be when somebody asks you to do something
is to be OUTRAGED and then claim that somebody needs to be in authority
to tell you to do that, and then when that doesn't work, you claim that
nobody is in authority, and therefore nobody can tell you do anything.
And occasionaly you pretend to phone people who you think might be the
Chief Anarchists, or something.

Whereas the truth is, it just isn't true that nobody is in charge at
Noisebridge. *Everybody* is in charge at Noisebridge, and if you're not
stepping up, and you're not listening to others and being courteous to
their needs, and you're just declaiming, chances are you're being
unexcellent. And usually that's okay, but sometimes it makes people so
mad that they ask you to leave. And lo, we all roll our eyes.

Anyway, this is all by-the-by, because we actually have a serious issue
here with court cases and incidents of harassment at the space and so
on, all of which is a little unclear at this point, but honestly growing
clearer every day. I am happy to talk to you about it at the meeting,
but I doubt it will really get much clearer before then, and certainly
not via a mailing list.

I do love you, you big grumpy fucker,

message ends

d.

********************************************************************** */

> 
> ^ most UNEXCELLENT.
> 
> ^ no idea what the incident is/was (if any) but this is being handled poorly.
> 
> 
> note:
> anyone that may be new to the space or a vet just mis-informed or confused,
> PLEASE ask more than one person in the space about something you want to know
> and remember NB is an open community and your voice is just as important as any
> other.
> 
> quoting an excellent veteran member from another incident:
> 
> >with respect to the hope that such discussion would
> >tend to educate the community that
> >* members have no privileges over non-members
> >* we each must treat all others excellently
> >* there are no sanctioned activities that trump other activities
> >* that a group of people place demands on others is unacceptable
> >  in this doocratic, consensus-oriented community.
> 
> 
> message ends
> ________________________________________________________________________________
> 
> On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 11:24 PM, Danny O'Brien <danny at spesh.com> wrote:
> 
>     So could anyone who sees Shawn L. (picture here:
>     https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/File:User_shawnl.jpg  ) ask him to
>     leave the space, and come to the next Noisebridge meeting? Preferably
>     a little bit earlier than 8PM, maybe 7PM, so we can speak before the
>     meeting?
> 
>     If Shawn doesn't leave or has any questions, I'm emailable at
>     danny at spesh.com.. Feel free to tell him I can meet up and discuss the
>     matter with him.
> 
>     d.
>     _______________________________________________
>     Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
>     Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
>     https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
> 
> ~the quieter you become, the more you are able to hear...
>