[sudo-discuss] defining our membership: notes, next steps, and what's at stake

[Marina Kukso]

hey all,

in case the wiki link didn't work for you because of the period at the end,
the correct link is: https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Sudo_room/membership

- marina

On Thu, Sep 12, 2013 at 3:49 AM, Marina Kukso <marina.kukso at gmail.com>wrote:

> hi all,
>
> we've been trying to figure out who is a member and how we determine
> membership for a long time. we have not yet come up with a resolution.
> although we keep (miraculously) making the rent, we are severely
> constrained in our ability to expand (expand our space, become a nonprofit,
> etc.) by not having good answers to key questions like "who is a member,"
> "how do people become new members," and "how do people continue to be
> members." we have explored a lot of ideas but no proposal has had the
> support of enough people to allow us to move forward.
>
> there was apparently a great discussion about membership at a meeting a
> few weeks ago which i sadly missed. unfortunately it was not super-well
> documented, so with marc's help, i've tried to represent some of what got
> discussed.
>
> so, here are the notes (marc and others who were there, please add if i
> missed anything or correct things if they're wrong):
>
> - people at the meeting agreed that membership should be based on *
> contribution* to the space and *trust*.
>
> - it's unclear what the mechanisms are for determining contribution and
> verifying trust.
>
> - here are the mechanisms for contribution that were discussed:
> -- people agreed that there should be space for financial and
> non-financial contributions. (personal note: our community as a whole has
> agreed on this since our founding, but we get tripped up when starting to
> think through the details of how something like this would work. we have
> not yet found a solution to this problem.)
> -- some folks proposed a member sign off (eg a member signs off on the
> contribution you've made to the space, or you report it yourself)
>
> - here are the mechanisms for trust that were discussed:
> -- noisebridge model: 3 existing members vouch for a person who is
> applying to be a member. (also discussed was lowering it to 1 existing
> member with 3 being seen as too high).
>
> - a guiding idea was that it should be easy to become a member and easy to
> revoke membership if trust was violated and/or contributions are not made.
>
> - additionally people were generally in agreement that membership should
> provide access to the space (door access) and access to sudo room resources.
>
>
> with those two issues as the standing problems that need to be resolved,
> people agreed to propose and share as many different mechanisms for
> verifying contribution and trust as they could come up with.
>
> so..please add here or on the wiki at
> https://sudoroom.org/wiki/Sudo_room/membership.
>
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