[hackerspaces] New Member Vetting

[Ron Bean]

> At Milwaukee Makerspace we've got a lot of equipment, some of it very 
> expensive, and some of it very dangerous, and all of it owned by individual
> members, so we don't just let anyone walk in and join. We do the whole 
> "come to open night, meet us, get to know us" routine, and have an existing
> member vouch for you.

Just to add to what Pete wrote above--

We haven't been enforcing the "get sponsored by two members" bit as much 
as we maybe should, but we do ask people to get checked out on the 
larger machines. We have had cases where people thought they knew what 
they were doing, but weren't as safe as we thought they should be 
(either to themselves or to the machine). Since all of our machines are 
owned by members, they tend not to like it if the machine gets damaged 
due to ignorance.

We've also had a few "sketchy" people show up occasionally-- using the 
word "overunity" tends to be a red flag. Or thinking the CIA was after 
them. AFAIK we've only had one member who was asked to leave, and I 
don't know the details about that one. We'd prefer to discourage such 
folks from becoming members in the first place.