Meeting Notes 2026 01 13

These are the notes from the The 848th Meeting of Noisebridge.

Date	2026 01 13
Note-takers	We-z, Elan, Anh, Naomi
Moderators	We-z

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Next Meeting Edit redirect [Next meeting]

• One or two bullet points of high-level meeting summary.

Meeting Summary

Announcements:

• Global Game Jam (1/26 - 2/1) - talk to LX, we need volunteers!

• Wikipedia's 25th Birthday (Jan 24th SFPL main branch) [Come hang out!]

Discussion recap:

• Finalized decision on new member tier names! (supporting, access, and core)
• LLM usage in Noisebridge discussion
• Postmortem on last week's Elle discussion
• Proposal to improve interpersonal communications going forward. (Let's do more restorative communication!!)

Introductions

• WEZ: likes to learn, love love <3

• Anh: Graphic design and games

• Nthmost: turning a Rockband piano thingy into general controller

• Carl: Idk I hack on ....

• Jane: doing a lot of embroidery (hand)

• Zach: raises butterflies

• JD: teach lasers (in charge of NB ;)

• Elan: <3 wiki lover

• Jospeph/ Jojo: enjoys fashion

• Dean: Meshtastic

• Jawa: Fashion

• Daniel(Web): Jack of all trades master of none, 3d printers, is a chickenhawk.

• Zacchaeus: in search of Guix people

• Brad: into CAD / woodworking / sailing

• LX: global game jam

• Angelo: working on hardware, industrial man.

• Farley: Philosopher / ex web dev.

Short announcements and events

LX: Global Game Jam (1/26 - 2/1) would like volunteers to help out since it'll be big!

Elan: Wikipedia's 25th Birthday Jan 24th come hang out and celebrate Wikipedia in the SF main library (also posted in discord) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event:Wikipedia_25th_Birthday_Bay_Area

Elan: This Saturday Eric's sister will be going through Eric's storage/workshop and see if there are any items that Noisebridge could use. I'd like to get something that is very Eric to put as a memorial next to the stairs.

Excellence

Our One Rule is to Be Excellent to Each Other.

Naomi:

• Positive part: showing up for the community, doing praxis!

• Negative: don't be mean, treat people how you would like to be treated

LX: Treat people how they want to be treated!

We-z: Kindness, empathy, emotional intelligence!

What does that mean? Please see our page on excellence https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Excellence!

Anti-Harassment Policy & Community Standards of Excellence

Noisebridge has an Anti-Harassment Policy !

Everyone is expected to follow the Anti-Harassment Policy, please familiarize yourself with it.

More approachable & specific guidelines: Community Standards.

https://safespace.noisebridge.net/ is one way to quickly raise issues which will be seen by people in Slack.

Brief Kudos

• Naomi: Kudos to Daniel (web) for new signage

• LX: Also his new donation site!

Zoning & Permitting Standing Item

Matt had to submit a final letter that is bounding on final working/formatting for compliance.

Happy path = 1 week completion!!!

Discussion Items

Discussion Item 1: Changing Names of Membership Tiers

On topic:	Changing Names of Membership Tiers
From/Raised by:	Daniel
Seeking:	Final Decision

Tell everyone coming in for the first time to become a supporting member!!! :D

Renaming of membership tiers to: supporting, access, and core.

...unrecorded discussions...

Lossy summary: There is discussion about the Discord poll not being unanimous around Core vs Steward but there is eventual agreement on "Core member"

Discussion Item 2: LLMBridge

On topic:	LLMBridge
From/Raised by:	Elan
Seeking:	Community Discussion/Decision (at some point, not this week)

Context: https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/LLMBridge

Elan: I think it is good practice to have a policy/norm about LLM use on NB wiki and in interpersonal communication. I think there are weird issues about its usage that "I" put in the wiki article - e.g. if something is written slick, it's given authority by the reader.

I personally would like not to not see relationships at NB be mediated by LLMs

Michael: One part of making someone a member of Sudo Room is excellence. If we use LLMs, we take away moral agency.

Naomi: Is that what happened?

Elan: I did not agree with how someone mediating used ChatGPT during the process and in general not disclosing LLM usage for Noisebridge interactions. It give me the ick.

JD: Using LLMs how is it different from talking to your spouse or someone you trust for advice on a negotiation/mediation you're stumped on for reflective feedback?

Daniel(Web): ...uncaptured discussion (sorry Daniel)... (extrapolated from context: we should treat Noisebridge wiki articles like one would Medium articles and attribute anything written to the original author)

Zackie: Are you sending someone directly the output of the LLM or reading it and using your own words? I think there is a significant difference.

WE-Z: I want to second what Daniel said earlier - i.e. treat it like Medium.com. I.e. attribute generated content solely to the person rather than the Noisebridge-voice. I think these should be e.g. Wheezy's ideas.

Daniel: Most know the feeling of having your head wrapped around a problem - there is a feeling about figuring things out a problem and using LLM a tool. This is totally different than letting the LLM do the work for you.

LX: Made a template for when people use LLM on the wiki disclosing use

Michael: When people use LLM it should be up to personal use - the privacy issue is not a new issue. Data tracking issues is not new

Elan: Agreed and makes sense. For me, it's disclosure. Disclosure solves all of the problems. Policy generating stuff, wiki articles, those things are less emotionally wrapped up. Using ungrounded input (for mediation) and treating the output as legit is not okay. The template that LX mentioned helps with these issues.

WEZ: LLMs are excellent tools for processing personal emotions - they literally will echo what you say back tell you you're right. Personal LLMs are great.

Discussion Item 3: Elle Decision Postmortem

On topic:	Elle Decision Postmortem
From/Raised by:	Elan
Seeking:	Discussion

Elan: I want to voice that I think how the process to 86 Elle last week feels shitty.

Naomi: I did not 86 her.

Elan: What is the difference between permanent ATL and 86?

Zackie:

One difference is that you can still go to other hackerspaces - "something has to change" was the sentiment at that meeting.

Elan: I was told part of the reason for not 86 was it would be difficult to document the reason. I feel like if behavior is unacceptable to Noisebridge we should make it an 86 and document it for future Noisebridgers.

WEZ: Clearly this person is a manipulator - can we ask this person to stop being political and trying to power grab? If we are bothered by their behavior, can we come together and ask whether or not we should 86? It should be egalitarian and not dictatorial - it should include everyone. David for instance last week was caught off guard.

Naomi: That is why I wrote the Anarchy Paralysis page.

JD: I thought it was LLM! (*joking tone*)

Naomi: It's not.

Elan: One of the stated reasons for the ban is policy injection. ...something... I trust JD a lot with all things laser-related but he is not the king of the laser.

Naomi: Why are we talking about guilds?

Elan: Because one of the stated reasons for the decision was power grabbing behavior. People are being accused of aggregating power by practicing do-ocracy. This rational feels shitty and I did not like how it went down

WEZ: I asked Elle to leave and did not want it to be super secretive which is Elle-like behavior. You (Elle) do this private political chat move that is shady. Noisebridge is a high trust community and we find out if you are trying to pull strings in the background. I was not going to be private about the ATL because I want to be transparent.

Elan: I agree that we should be public. It seems we have applied a different set of standards here. Elle is being accused in one circumstances for declaring we should be public and then in another that she uses PMs and that is manipulative -- this feels like a double standard or at least inconstantly applied and that feels unexcellent. Similar things happened to other people doing good work. It sucks.

LX: It was better that she was not 86'd - I think the consequences of 86 propose a direct safety risk rather than behavior disagreements. We can thank a person for their help and still get to a point where we ask them to leave without banning them from other hackerspaces. Naomi handled it better by not using a direct 86. I only had positive experiences with Elle. But I got a better understanding from other people and got that the discussion that were done were healthy. Elle was really nice with certain people and got into strong conflict with others. The process was fair and represents all the emotional labor done (mostly by Naomi). The most serious issue was injecting an ATL during mediation via Policy Injection and conflict escalation.

WEZ: All these dark patterns that I were not appreciative of...it was a double edged sword. We have one rule which is to be excellent and not be manipulative. There are a lot of smart people here who are capable of manipulation. To Elan's point, we should have everyone's perspective involved for this.

Michael: I've met Elle before and the interaction was good. Using private chats and channels itself is not problematic but we are a hackerspace so transparency is important. We have to consider if this person imposes a harm to NB.

Elan: WEZ made precisely the same claim about transparency - ie that was claimed by Elle to be the norm when talking with Justin about talking in #bravespace. This is was called out as policy injection and it feels like its a repeated trend of a double standard.

I agree she has called people out stronger than need to be, and upset people in the process.

I was on vacation and two people messaged me about the mediation chat saying that people were pointing out that I would disagree and asked if I wanted to chime in - I declined. When I got back it felt weird that this all went down without an inciting incident after being put on notice by WEZ.

Naomi: There was more info that was involved.

Elan: It feels from the outside this was triggered by going through old discord logs.

Daniel: Elle did not propose physical or property harm -- the harm was mostly sociological (that was my understanding).

Naomi: The triggering event was not scraping logs - I reached out to Elle about 2-3 weeks ago - I put her on notice on purpose. She said we should have a private conversation -- which conflicts to what she said earlier about having a rule to not have private chats. She responds that things have been very stressful and came at me for 4 different things and had "please fire me" guilt energy. I was trying to have a decent convo but that triggered things for me.

LX: As a friend of Elle, Cloud was asked to leave during mediation and that was a violation of our standards - you do not get to decide how things go, that's the mediator's job. Either we allow someone to improperly ATL Cloud and be at the space or we took the steps that we did.

WEZ: Appreciate your insights - NB kind of runs on vibes. We can vibe out if an ATL is in good faith - we have this policy in place to help people feel safe. I did everything I could to help Elle feel safe even with the ATL. It sucks bc I also have friends that cannot handle the open transparency that we have. We are a leaderless cult. Some people can't handle NB because of their nature and tendencies.

Naomi: That feels like a nature thing (i.e. some people can't handle NB) but I don't think it's a nature thing.

WEZ: Yeah some people just really want to know who is in charge around here. I didn't mean to make it sound like a nature thing

Elan: People don't always act excellent. People are imperfect - I'm sure if you look through my discord you could find examples of me being snippy.

Naomi: I analyzed you as well for the record.

Elan: Sure. That's a weird thing to do.

Elan: Anyways - this is a mess. I'm just saying call people out and don't be mad when people call you out. Don't put off having uncomfortable conversations. We could have corrected this behavior and people don't have to be friends. The revealed preferencec of how we handle non-safety-related interpersonal issues is by kicking them out (which I would say is the wrong approach).

WEZ: Mmm. We escalated someone who escalates.

Naomi: Someone took a disagreement and re-framed it into a WIN-LOSE situation. Why do you think this situation became more than what it initially was?

Elan: thousand yard stare In a bygone era, Cloud took on Wyatt's cause as a way to fuel the vendetta with Elle (and others) and we have been rehashing incident ever since.

Naomi: I don't think she was wrong in a lot of her intuitions but I didn't even use any of that. It was a lot of situations where things were framed as WIN-LOSE.

Michael: Whoever blocked her Big M - is that confidential?

Everyone: No, it was Mark.

LX: Naomi is trying to put together a draft that better improves our process and conflict resolution toolkit. I offered to host a workshop for these things as well.

Carl: If Elle returns in the future.. Is there an opportunity for her and what does that look like?

Naomi: Right now there isn't a great path except for time. There are more than a dozen people who are not keen on seeing her. And we are bad at mediation. Maybe we should have a relationship with a 3rd party mediator. Mediation isn't cheap. Elle would probably have to be in mediation with a dozen people.

Discussion Item 4: Restorative Communication

On topic:	Restorative Communication
From/Raised by:	Naomi
Seeking:	Discussion

Naomi: [improv game: asks for a place, a relationship, and a situation to set up a hypothetical about RC]

Michael: [interrupts Naomi in the middle of a hypothetical situation about RC] I just want to say I have to leave, I didn't come here for an extended thing about a situation i don't know about...

Naomi: [looks flustered] Wow. Ok. Michael, when you stood up to interrupt me in the middle of my talking about RC, I felt frustrated. Next time, could you just stand up silently?

Michael: Uh, yeah?

Naomi: Thank you!

https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Restorative_Communication

Naomi: Wow! That was way better than a hypothetical.

Naomi: Vocalize dis-agreements according to the RC template:

• Look

• Feel

• Offer

• Ask

No sneak dissing! Vocalizing in front of others helps people people to these agreements.

JD: What if not everyone uses it?

Naomi: Yeah, there are multiple failure modes -- 1 is that people don't actually know what their feelings are. another is that you express your feelings and people take advantage of your vulnerability.

Naomi: So that's why it's imperative to do this for the community all at once... you can't just do it one individual at at time.

Naomi:

Cultural interventions in order of how impactful i think they'd be:

• Modeling of RC behavior by people who are around a lot
• RC cards providing permanent, physical intervention in the space
• Strategic deployment in the meeting template
• Announcements for more RC workshops
• Putting more stuff on the wiki about the meta of RC
• Laminated page about RC placed in membership binder

LX: We should run RC workshops.

Do-ocratic Task Board

Participation also means doing stuff to contribute to the space. Propose new tasks or pick some tasks from Github, from what needs to be done around you, or whatever, and see if someone will sign up to work on that task. Anyone can sign up and it's a great way to show you are contributing!

End of Meeting

Note taker posts the notes

• Clean and tidy the meeting notes including removing all these really verbose instructions.
• Fill out the short summary at the top listing just announcements, consensus items, & discussion topics.
• Copy paste the notes to the next meeting page. (They will become Last meeting at midnight.) https://www.noisebridge.net/index.php?title=Last_meeting&redirect=no
• Email the meeting summary to Noisebridge Discuss and Noisebridge Announce lists.
• CC on the email treasurer@noisebridge.net and secretary@noisebridge.net if there are new members and philanthropists.
• Edit the Current Consensus Items if anything is proposed for consensus next week.
• Edit the Consensus Items History if anything was reached consensus or failed to reach consensus this week.

• What wiki pages need updating? What new wiki pages do we need? Discovered from the meeting.

Fun things to do after

• Do a 10 minute cleanup, bring dishes up stairs and wash them, clean the bathroom
• Have some beers on the patio
• Prepare the next weeks' meeting notes
• Lick the walls. Or just draw on them
• sing the Hackernationale (this almost never happens)