[hackerspaces] Removing non-hackerspaces from the hackerspaces.org list?

Ben Brown ben at kwartzlab.ca
Tue Jun 21 15:29:13 CEST 2011


Err, why do hackerspaces need ratings? They're not all the same, nor do 
they cater to the same sort of people. Some spaces focus on making 
things/physical workshop, others are just social spaces with internet 
access. Many are in between.

There's been a lot of talk in the past of what a hackerspace truly is, 
with no real consensus. Should we really be rating spaces on an 
arbitrary set of guidelines? What makes a place more 'hacky' to someone, 
but not to someone else? Hell, even the word 'hacker' has different 
meanings to people.

I think spaces would be be better served by having a descriptive wiki 
entry with lots of pictures and video, to show what they're really 
about. I could see a comment system though, that allows visitors to 
publicly share their thoughts about the space. A rating 'out of 5 stars' 
is way to subjective to be useful. What I may think is an awesome space 
may not be the same to another, and vice versa.

Cheers,
Ben

On 6/21/2011 8:55 AM, Curbob wrote:
> Maybe 1 to 10 being from 1: hang out space to 10: full blown hackerspace
>
> That way we're not commenting on how good or bad of a space we or 
> others may think a place is.
>
> On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 8:41 AM, Far McKon <farmckon at gmail.com 
> <mailto:farmckon at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>      Involved in Four spaces?  You my friend, get the 'Overinvolved'
>     award.
>
>     I can see why ratings would be nice, but I think if there is any
>     system like that, we have to be sure people are rating on the same
>     scale. Friendlyness? Technical ability? 'Hackerspace-ess' of the
>     space?  I think it's a cool idea, but could use a little more fleshing
>     out.
>
>     I think a mini-RFC on what you are proposing would be cool, if you
>     have the time to make one.
>
>     hack on,
>     - Far
>
>
>     On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 8:35 AM, Koen Martens <gmc at sonologic.nl
>     <mailto:gmc at sonologic.nl>> wrote:
>     > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>     > Hash: SHA1
>     >
>     > On Thu, May 05, 2011 at 09:16:32AM -0700, john arclight wrote:
>     >> It seems like reviews work pretty well on sites like Yelp that list
>     >> restaurants. Give people the info and decide for youself.
>     >> Example:
>     >> "Butch's Coffee Shop - 3 reviews: While they do serve coffee,
>     it's mostly a
>     >> leather bar where BDSM enthusiasts meet. Lattes half off on
>     Mondays. 3/5
>     >> stars"
>     >> Etc.
>     >
>     > Well, since i'm on a hackerspace tour currently, I was thinking
>     about this
>     > again. Yelp basically has two fields for a review: the review
>     prosa itself
>     > and a quantitized rating. Also, you can rate the reviews themselves.
>     >
>     > It seems most of the review sites have this quantitized rating
>     (4 out of 5,
>     > 3 stars out of 10, whatever). I don't think that is really
>     useful though
>     > for hackerspace reviews. The meta-review (rating the reviews)
>     might..
>     >
>     > Anyway, as a first stab at getting this started, i'm thinking of
>     a template
>     > to store reviews, with fields 'author', 'review' and
>     'hackerspace'. Add in
>     > some mediawiki magic to make a form appear on each hackerspace
>     page (or a
>     > page with the same name in the Review namespace) that allows
>     inputting
>     > the review text. And some more magic to aggregate the reviews on the
>     > page.
>     >
>     > Now I'm resisting the temptation to porpose a rating, such as with
>     > couchsurfing wher eyou can say 'positive/neutral/negative'. I can
>     > see uses for it, but I hate being negative and think that if you are
>     > being negative you should just shut up :)
>     >
>     > - - gmc
>     >
>     > - --
>     > http://www.sonologic.nl/
>     > http://koenmartens.nl/
>     > https://www.revspace.nl/
>     > http://hxxfoundation.com/
>     > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>     > Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux)
>     >
>     > iEYEARECAAYFAk4Aj/YACgkQktDgRrkFPpa0xACgshtjNhC4T7RFIUwDfdT7G2ry
>     > +i4AnRh8ChE+ouu5RmKhwA4hGP6zuI08
>     > =vMkt
>     > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>     > _______________________________________________
>     > Discuss mailing list
>     > Discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org
>     <mailto:Discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org>
>     > http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>     >
>     _______________________________________________
>     Discuss mailing list
>     Discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org <mailto:Discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org>
>     http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at lists.hackerspaces.org
> http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.hackerspaces.org/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20110621/8ac33f91/attachment-0001.htm>


More information about the Discuss mailing list