[hackerspaces] Hackerspace drama, oh my!

[Torrie Fischer]

On Tuesday, July 01, 2014 12:02:43 Buddy Smith wrote:
> Saw this on /r/hackerspaces/
> 
> https://medium.com/@tdfischer_/rip-synhak-7093ade6b943
> 
> Anyone involved care to comment? Has something similar happened to other
> spaces? How did you get past it? How could it be prevented?

Hi, that was me. Heartwarming to see it getting some traction.

Some of the solutions we've come up with for our successor Hackron:

## Incorporating a list of "values" alongside mission statement and purpose in 
the bylaws

  https://github.com/tdfischer/hackron/blob/proposals/values/VALUES.md

This is an idea that we picked up from our friends at Norton Imperial Labs out 
in the SF bay area.

## Having an onboarding process

99% of our problems could have been solved if we weren't in a rush to pick up 
new members. A solution we're considering is having an associate membership 
"trial period" of sorts, where you don't have any real powers to hack the 
space other than some warm fuzzies that you belong

## Including "Community" and "Safe Space" into our principals

SYNHAK was a fork of Noisebridge. Most folks here know that Noisebridge runs 
on consensus, excellence, and do-ocracy (whatever those mean :)). After some 
lengthy SYNHAK support group meetings (at the bar), we decided that trying to 
argue with the board that we were a safe space and a community was futile. It 
just wasn't listed anywhere in the bylaws or anywhere else on the site except 
a few implications.

## Codifying our decision making process in the bylaws

The biggest schism that happened was when the current board saw the bylaws and 
interpreted a section of it to mean that we vote on everything instead of 
consensus. It was pretty much downhill from there with too much yelling and 
screaming at meetings. Miserable.
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