Anarchism at Noisebridge

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LLM usage: This page was fully written by nthmost using Claude (Anthropic) as a research and writing tool, based on systematic scanning of the Noisebridge wiki mirror and mailing list archives (2007–2022). All quoted text is drawn directly from primary sources.

This page documents the ongoing community conversation about anarchism as theory and practice at Noisebridge, drawn from meeting notes (2009–present), mailing list archives (2007–2022), and wiki pages authored by community members. It does not take a position on whether Noisebridge is or is not an anarchist organization.

Adopted Practices

At Noisebridge's founding in 2007, the community adopted several organizational practices that are rooted in anarchist theory, though they were not always framed that way at the time.

Do-ocracy

The principle that authority to act comes from acting, not from position. Documented on the wiki as: "If you want something to happen, do it. If you see something that needs doing, do it." The wiki page notes its relationship to anarchist organizing explicitly: "Noisebridge is, in many ways, an experiment in do-ocracy."

Consensus

Noisebridge uses a consensus-based decision-making process for significant community decisions, particularly those involving membership and major resource use. The Consensus wiki page traces this to anarchist and Quaker traditions. Full "Big-C" Consensus requires a proposal to appear at two consecutive meetings; any Member may block.

"Be excellent to each other"

The governing social norm, deliberately left undefined. The Noisebridge wiki page describes this as intentional: the community should negotiate the meaning of "excellence" itself rather than codifying rules.

The Anarchy wiki page, authored primarily by community member LX, states directly: "Anarchist and anarchist organizational and educational philosophy is a major influence on Noisebridge's ways of excellence, do-ocracy, and consensus."

Definitional Debates

The question of whether Noisebridge is an anarchist organization has been contested since the earliest days of the mailing list. The following are documented instances of the community debating this question directly.

October 2009: "Consensus and the old ways"

One of the earliest substantive governance debates on the mailing list. The thread arose over the mechanics of the consensus process and whether it was working.

Crutcher Dunnavant wrote:

We have a governance process. It lets us make some decisions. But don't kid yourself, this isn't a magical anarchist paradise. There is a power hierarchy, and it is enforced.

Quinn responded:

honest to god, no trolling, pure quinn-confusion: why did you join noisebridge? why did you join a consensus anarchist social experiment if you didn't want to do that?

Christie Dudley offered a different framing of do-ocracy:

It's my perspective that the "do-ocracy" isn't so much an empowerment, but more of an acceptance of what will be and a means to reduce the bickering over what was done... It's funny that the word "anarchist" is used to describe a system that, although we don't have many rules, is still a system. I would characterize it as an ultimately social organization where the culture we establish is the rules.

Al Billings called for replacing the model entirely, in the same thread:

Parliamentary procedure; Robert's Rules of Order; One member - one vote rather than consensus "I block" BS that takes 20 hours to talk out and gives any member the right to block any decision, no matter the will of the rest of the group.

July–August 2013: "Anarchist? Libertarian?"

The most concentrated mailing list discussion of NB's identity — 108 messages in July 2013 alone — was triggered by debate over whether the word "libertarian" appeared on the NB wiki. It quickly expanded to the anarchism question.

Rachel McConnell, one of the founding members, wrote:

As one of the founding members, I can say that I am not an anarchist and anarchy was never one of the goals of Noisebridge. The goal was only ever to be an awesome hackerspace. You can describe it as anarchistic if you feel it fits (anyone can describe it however they like) but do not think that means everyone, or the organization in general, will agree with the label. And NEVER believe Noisebridge will conform to your idea of what an anarchist organization should be or do just because you label it so.

Danny O'Brien, who had previously written an article titled "Is Noisebridge an Anarchist Hackerspace?" for a publication, clarified:

I wrote that ["purest anarchist collective principles"]. It's a joke. The idea that we use "purest anarchist collective principles" is obviously a joke, because we don't... The piece I wrote debates the point at length.

Johny Radio pushed back, citing founder Mitch Altman:

Noisebridge founder Mitch Altman has used the term "anarchy" on-list to describe how NB operates: "Anarchy will take care of it"... The primary Noisebridge decision-making instrument, Consensus, comes straight outta Anarchist theory and practice. Do you disagree with that statement? Leaderless structure is a core Anarchist principal. Do you disagree with that statement?

Snail summarized a common middle position:

We attract a lot of anarchists or anarchist-interested... because they like the non-hierarchical structure and that we don't have big lists of rules, but mainly we attract a lot of hackers and technology folks of all political leanings... People like to throw around the word "anarchism" in Noisebridge either because they are self-described anarchists or they are saying it kind of jokingly because of how non-organized we are & that is what they think anarchy is [chaos], whether that's correct or not.

Jeffrey Carl Faden:

Anarchist, feminist... jeez. People are really obsessed with labels. I thought the only label we went by was "excellent."

Anarchism in Practice: Documented Invocations

This section documents instances in which community members explicitly connected their actions or arguments to anarchist principles, or where anarchist concepts were directly invoked to frame a dispute.

Do-ocracy: definitions and limits

From August 2012, in discussion of a Do-ocracy poster design, Andy Isaacson added an amendment to the standard do-ocracy doctrine:

There's one addendum to doocracy that I like to remind people about: If you've done something, make sure that other people can find out what you did! Edit the wiki, send an email, leave a note, make the project discoverable in some way.

From the meeting notes (2010-05-11), Cynthia:

Anarchist space — you can do whatever you want, but you are also responsible for whatever you do.

From the meeting notes, on the question of do-ocracy and personal bans (2014-06-24):

Kelly: There are people who believe that one person should not do-ocratically ban someone. We should know the parameters of the do-ocracy.

Consensus as anarchist instrument

From the meeting notes (2013-05-28), during a consensus process discussion:

Andy: Consensus means "I can live with it", not "I agree with it 100%". The block is an extreme amount of power to give one person. We should use the process we have — this is consistent with our anarchist values.

Structurelessness

Jo Freeman's 1970 essay "The Tyranny of Structurelessness" was cited directly in NB discussions during periods of governance strain. The essay argues that informal, non-hierarchical groups develop hidden power structures that are less accountable than formal ones precisely because they are unacknowledged.

From the meeting notes (2012-08-07), during debate over an anti-harassment policy:

Danny: We need to think about the "tyranny of structurelessness". People are using consensus to do what they want.

The Anarchy_Paralysis wiki page (authored by User:Nthmost, 2026) describes the specific NB failure mode of indefinite consensus block as "anarchy paralysis" — when the absence of overridable structure causes collective inaction rather than collective action.

Mutual aid

From the meeting notes (2013-08-06), in discussion of NB's relationship to Occupy SF:

Valentines Day 2012, proposed "Occupy our hearts" to Occupy SF. We're anarchists, we need to rely on each other for mutual aid. We have to take care of each other before we can save the world.

Anarchism and policing

From the meeting notes (2012-05-08), in a membership discussion:

[Speaker] understood the protocol was to invite people to general meeting when banning someone. Surprised anarchists would call the police on a non-violent person. Would like to ban this kind of behavior.

From the meeting notes (2015-05-26), on camera installation:

Dave: In a place that's been at the forefront of protesting against NSA and live invasions, to call ourselves an anarchist space, it can be guessed 60% who is who. I have a problem with it.

Key Texts Produced by the Community

The following wiki pages represent the community's own theoretical writing on anarchism and related governance concepts.

Page	Primary author(s)	Created	Notes
Anarchy	LX (Lxpk), Johnyradio	~2012	NB's own reading list and framing of anarchist influences; not a position statement
Do-ocracy	Rubin110, LX, Beka	~2009	Core governance doc; traces do-ocracy to anarchist organizing
Consensus	Multiple	~2009	Process documentation; notes Quaker and anarchist roots
Against Policy	Unknown	Unknown	Short manifesto arguing rules undermine the culture they're meant to protect
Anarchist Hackers	PerroMalo, Rek2, LX (Hispagatos collective)	~2015	Documents the Hispagatos anarchist hacker network and its relationship to NB
Anarchafeminist Hackerhive	Unknown	Unknown	Describes an anarchafeminist organizing thread within NB
Consensus Reading List	Multiple	Unknown	Curated readings on consensus theory, mostly from anarchist and feminist organizing traditions
Anarchy Paralysis	nthmost	2026-01-06	Analysis of how consensus-block mechanisms can produce collective inaction

Danny O'Brien's external article "Is Noisebridge an Anarchist Hackerspace?" (written for Make or similar, ~2012–2013) is frequently cited in mailing list discussion but is not archived on the wiki.

The Recurring Argument

The same core debate — whether NB's anarchist-influenced structure produces good outcomes, and whether it should be modified or abandoned — recurred at roughly two-year intervals throughout the mailing list period.

Period	Key threads	Central question
2009	"Consensus and the old ways"	Can this scale? Is there really no power hierarchy?
2010	"Sleeping at NB", "Practical Politics" (seed)	What does open-door anarchism mean when people need somewhere to sleep?
2011	"Practical Politics", "Banning Patrick", "You and your pretty little Consensus Process"	First serious reform proposals; live test of removal from an anarchist space
2011–2012	"Tired of Noisebridge BS", "why would hackers come here?"	Does the model produce good outcomes?
2013	"Why Consensus Kills Community", "Anarchist? Libertarian?"	Is the model structurally broken? Who is NB for?
2014	Board governance controversy; "why cointelpro2.0 kills community"	Reform vs. replace — resolved by membership rejection of board changes
2015–present	Scattered; lower volume	Institutional memory of 2013–2014 as background frame

2010: Open Door vs. Community

The December 2010 thread "Sleeping at NB" — 112 matching messages — put the sharpest real-world pressure on NB's anarchist values. The question was whether and how to address people sleeping in the space, and what the do-ocracy permitted in response.

Jacob Appelbaum argued against shaming:

Actually — there are exceptions to people sleeping if they miss the last train but we feel rather self-righteous about class divisions. It's OK to sleep on the sofa if you have a home and you just made a "mistake" — whereas it's not OK to sleep on the sofa if you're making a series of "mistakes" by some random person's judgment call. Perhaps I'm the only person who thinks this distinction is horse shit... So I propose a radical idea: Try to understand the reason each person in our community sleeps on the sofa. Noisebridge is all about deviation from the norm.

Moxie Marlinspike introduced the anarchist theory of property vs. possession, then drew a sharp conclusion about NB's nature:

The classic anarchist joke, which I believe appeared in an early issue of Harbinger, is: "You people are crazy if you don't believe in property, what would you do if you came home and found a stranger watching TV in your livingroom?" "I'd ask them where the TV came from." The serious response they followed up with, of course, is that there's a difference between property and possession. And that having a critique of the former has nothing to do with boundaries that you define around voluntary association for the latter.

I don't believe that Noisebridge can, in even the most remote sense, be considered a "community." Most of the people at Noisebridge (sleeping or otherwise) hardly know each-other's names, which is seriously light-years away from what really being part of a community together implies. Almost everyone there at any given time is, essentially, only a fractional distance away from "a stranger who wandered in off the street." In its current incarnation, Noisebridge is a public space, and I don't think I would find engaging with problems as if it's an actual community to be very fulfilling.

Al Billings, in the companion thread "Sleeping in the Space AND Death and Taxes," connected governance dysfunction directly to funding:

My point, which you blithely ignored, is that the "sleeping in the space" problem is symptomatic of a set of issues (and ways of resolving or not resolving issues) which strikes me as part of the reason that people have quit paying dues at NB or otherwise financially supporting the space... Noisebridge has a governance problem, from what I see, and people are deciding it isn't worth the effort.

That same month, Shannon Lee opened a thread called "Practical Politics" with what would become a recurring request: I realized in watching the last couple of threads that there are people here who know a lot about running anarchist and consensus organizations. Would any of you be willing to put together a reading list, or possibly hold a symposium?

2011: Reform Proposals and Live Tests

February 2011 was the second-highest month in the archive by match count (104 messages). It picked up Shannon Lee's "Practical Politics" thread and simultaneously worked through a live membership crisis — the attempted removal of Patrick Keys — that became a case study in what an anarchist space does when it has no agreed removal procedure.

Rachel Lyra Hospodar on the consensus problem:

Our consensus process is clearly a little broken but I don't really know too much about how to improve it. Aestetix recently said something like "the point of consensus is that we never reach it." This is kind of like the reason I like using windows — since nothing has ever Just Worked, I know how to fix, jimmy, and reset all kinds of things. It would be cool if we had a parallel OS option for decision-making in our space that did actually work, for when do-ocracy just isn't enough.

Moxie Marlinspike, in the sister thread "You and your pretty little Consensus Process too.," cited external reference points:

You might find Crimethinc's "Beyond Democracy" to be helpful background information... There are a number of references to larger-scale instances of autonomous movements, topless federations, and consensus organizations in that essay, which you could do some follow-up research on. The Zapatistas, Mondragon Collectives, and Spanish Anarchists might be good starting points. Or even just show up at a NoBAWC meeting in the Bay Area to talk with folks about how their workplaces differ. In the end, though, you're probably correct if you're suggesting that authoritarian decision making processes are faster.

The Patrick Keys banning thread ran simultaneously, generating 64 matching messages. The collision between anarchist open-access values and community safety played out in real time, with community members invoking do-ocracy both to justify action and to restrain it, and no agreed procedure available to resolve the dispute.

2013–2014: The Governance Crisis

The 2013–2014 period was the most intense in the mailing list record. The December 2013 threads “Why Consensus Kills Community” and “Keeping Associate Members in Their Place” debated whether the consensus model was structurally broken — see Critiques of the Model and The Power Paradox for the detailed exchanges. That argument culminated in a direct confrontation between a faction of the elected board and the membership.

The Board Governance Controversy (March–April 2014)

In March 2014, three elected board members — Tom Lowenthal, Ari Lacenski, and Al Sweigart — bypassed standard process by directly pushing governance changes to Noisebridge's bureaucracy repository without using pull requests or consulting the other two board members. The proposed changes included:

• Mandatory $80/month membership dues (or $40 with treasurer approval)
• Replacement of consensus with 2/3 majority voting
• Elimination of remote participation rights
• Board authority to make final decisions on membership appeals
• Increased membership barriers (4 sponsors instead of 2)

On March 26, 2014, board member Madelynn Martiniere announced the changes were "effective immediately."

Board member Naomi Most publicly contradicted this:

The board has, in fact, not 'agreed' on these changes, because they were never discussed. Only two board members plus the proposer voted in favor — totaling three votes out of five.

The community created PR #29 to revert the changes; it was merged March 29, 2014. Naomi Most proposed that future board policy changes require a 4/5 supermajority. Two of the three board members who had pushed the changes subsequently resigned. The controversy set the conditions for subsequent board recall efforts.

A full account is documented at Noisebridge Board Governance Controversy (March–April 2014).

The mailing list debates in March 2014 — including "why would hackers come to noisebridge?" and "why cointelpro2.0 kills community" — were occurring simultaneously with this governance confrontation.

Naomi Most, in the "why would hackers come to noisebridge?" thread, wrote:

I am openly biased towards anarchism and lack of top-down control. But we can't keep shouting down the idea of "oversight" to address problems that Noisebridge has had for YEEAAARRRSSS when we've certainly given the Noisebridge traditional methods that long to fix things.

The "why cointelpro2.0 kills community" thread documented a separate dispute in which meeting notes recording a consensus block were subsequently edited to record that consensus had been reached. Kevin Schiesser wrote:

Consensus was blocked, we reached a do-ocratic alternative, yet the wiki and repo reflect otherwise. I still do not understand. Why is our history being rewritten?

Mailing List: Voices in Depth

The following sections draw directly from the noisebridge-discuss mailing list archive (2007–2022). Each quote links to the original pipermail message.

What Do-ocracy Actually Means

The earliest sustained mailing list debate on governance was "Consensus and the old ways" in October 2009 — the first full month in the 2169 Mission space. It contains some of the clearest early definitions of do-ocracy from people who were building the practice in real time.

Christie Dudley (longobord) — the most philosophically precise:

There will always be people jumping in and doing stuff that the rest of the group may or may not agree with. It's my perspective that the "do-ocracy" isn't so much an empowerment, but more of an acceptance of what will be and a means to reduce the bickering over what was done. Some of us are not exactly the sort of people to go through a bureaucratic process in order to get things approved. After all the opposite of a do-ocracy is bureaucracy.'

It's funny that the word "anarchist" is used to describe a system that, although we don't have many rules, is still a system. I would characterize it as an ultimately social organization where the culture we establish is the rules. Although the rules are not hard and fast, things are decided by the cultural traditions and practices.

Jim (jim@), same thread:

i don't get it. "do-ocracy" to me translates to permission to do whatever we like, as we like, how we like, regardless of others' ideas. "if you want something to happen, do it" is what i've understood, the opposite of mob enforcement (which is itself somewhat contrary to oligarchical enforcement, both of which seem contrary to do-ocracy and the essential tenet of consensus: do as you please with confidence that others can't screw you up).

Andy Isaacson (adi@), August 2012 — in the "Do-ocracy Poster" thread, adding an amendment to the doctrine:

I don't have a pithy way to say this, so maybe it doesn't belong on this poster, but there's one addendum to doocracy that I like to remind people about: If you've done something, make sure that other people can find out what you did! Edit the wiki, send an email, leave a note, make the project discoverable in some way.

The Tragedy of the Commons Critique

Jonathan Lassoff (jof@), February 2012 — "Tired of Noisebridge BS, As of Late":

I see this as a pretty classic "tragedy of the commons" situational archetype. With totally-open social structures, and semi-anarchistic supporters doing little bits of work here and there to keep things afloat, we can't scale forever. And it's my opinion that we're edging up against a scale boundary where valuable community members aren't connecting in the ways that they once did, and we're not working together as effectively as we used to. I getting the feeling like it may be time to fork.

Martin Bogomolni (martinbogo@), same thread:

Part of being in a Do-ocracy, and a consensus driven space, is owning up to when you make a mistake and being ready to undo what you've done, graciously. Throwing out someone's stuff, misplacing it, and being less than careful with other people's things makes it incredibly difficult to hit "undo".

The Power Paradox

How the consensus process protects the people with blocking power.

Al Sweigart (asweigart@), December 2013 — "Keeping associate members in their place":

Capital-M members unilaterally block any change that would prevent them from being able to unilaterally block whatever they don't like. They are essentially voting to keep other people from voting, and I call bullshit on that. There's clearly been a large amount of people at Noisebridge expressing their dissatisfaction with consensus, but the members who block change (with paper-thin reasoning) don't offer their own alternatives because they don't want any alternatives.

The associate member role exists to placate new people from seeking out full membership. Continuing with consensus makes Noisebridge exclusive and unequal BY DESIGN, and my point is that any member who pretends they aren't trying to maintain their privileged status is being laughably naive.

Rubin Abdi (rubin@), responding (note: on hiatus from full membership at the time):

A member can disagree with the current form of a consensus item and state they would block that item from being consented on and ratified in one form or another. This however doesn't equate to some ability to cut off discussion, that is up to the group running the meeting to decide.

Jim (jim@), same thread — the minimalist position:

Count me as opposed to getting rid of consensus. However, I'd probably support a proposal for redefining consensus such that someone can block with respect to one's activities and use of resources but not with respect to one's view of how others behavior. Count me as opposed to councils or associate memberships or any formal governing structures or rules other than "treat each other excellently."

Al Sweigart, March 2014 — "why would hackers come to noisebridge?":

Noisebridge has taken to the extreme a philosophy that we shouldn't ban people or that we should give bad behavior effectively unlimited second chances. Consensus is what affords this: a tiny minority can block, delay, and in general abuse process to wear out their opponents. A board does not have to endlessly talk about policy and makes decisions by majority vote: a board can set policy and gasp make decisions. This includes suspending and banning people for bad behavior.

Naomi Most (pnaomi@), same thread:

I am openly biased towards anarchism and lack of top-down control. But we can't keep shouting down the idea of "oversight" to address problems that Noisebridge has had for YEEAAARRRSSS when we've certainly given the Noisebridge traditional methods that long to fix things. For the record, I don't agree with the idea of direct people-management or in changing the way we arrive at decisions at Noisebridge.

Critiques of the Model

By 2013 the mailing list had accumulated enough history to generate sustained structural critique. The following are the most direct articulations of what participants thought was wrong with the model.

Johny Radio, December 2013 — “Why Consensus Kills Community” thread:

The consensus & anarchism culture of "no rules, no one is the boss of me" allows strong-willed people to bully their way around while making others feel like they have no place to tell them to stop. NB encourages everyone to police everyone. The culture says: "anyone can, and should, enforce policy, however they interpret it, however they see fit."

Danny O'Brien, same thread — a structural rather than moral diagnosis, listing why NB attracts difficult participants by design:

Some ways that Noisebridge attracts eccentric points-of-view: Zero cost — even if the rest of your life is screwed up, you can still come to NB. Always open — even if you can't even synchronise with the sun and the moon, you're still welcome at NB. Self-declaratory "anarchist"/alternative attitude. Do-ocracy — all you really have to do to participate, is participate. Express interest in new experimental political models — all the people who would normally push back against the crazy appear to be interested in crazy new societal arrangements themselves. The bet is/was that accommodating eccentricity like this brings you beneficial behaviour and results.

Al Sweigart, same thread, offered the most direct rejection of the model:

I think the whole anarchist-consensus experiment has been going on for five years and has produced nothing but drama and dysfunction. It's time to say the experiment failed, clean up the lab, and try something new.

Moxie Marlinspike, February 2011 — citing external reference points in “You and your pretty little Consensus Process too.”:

You might find Crimethinc's "Beyond Democracy" to be helpful background information... There are references to larger-scale instances of autonomous movements, topless federations, and consensus organizations in that essay. The Zapatistas, Mondragon Collectives, and Spanish Anarchists might be good starting points. In the end, though, you're probably correct if you're suggesting that authoritarian decision making processes are faster.

Torrie Fischer (tdfischer@), March 2014 — reporting sudoroom's modifications to the NB-derived consensus process, offered as a possible model:

It adds three constraints on blocking consensus: One person may block consensus for no longer than 6 weeks, an indefinite block can only happen with the support of a total of three members, and the reason for a block must be clearly and explicitly written in the meeting minutes. Nobody is required to approve of the reason for a block, but this prevents a single person from stopping the entire process without having to put the effort in to convince others why.

History as Battleground

The "why cointelpro2.0 kills community" thread (March 2014) reveals something structural about how consensus history gets contested: the same meeting can be documented as both "consensus reached" and "consensus blocked" depending on who edits the notes.

The thread concerns an attempted consensus ban. At one point during the meeting, James blocked. After the meeting, another board member edited the meeting notes to remove the block and record that consensus had been reached. Kevin Schiesser documented the diff:

Kevin Schiesser (bfb@):

PLEASE, read the diff of the meeting notes. dj ryan posted a really long back and forth note of what was discussed. The diff is Tom's edit that revokes the whole discussion that concludes:

-- James: I will block

-- Consensus: Blockers: James

++ We had a very long discussion... We reached consensus. Kevin, JC, and James stood aside.

James blocked, it's in the notes. There was substantial back and forth... Consensus was blocked, we reached a do-ocratic alternative, yet the wiki and repo reflect otherwise. I still do not understand. Why is our history being rewritten?

This is how consensus works! It can be long, even painful, but through genuine discussion we reach a solution that no one thought of coming into the conversation, and it is often greater than the original proposal and the status quo.

Al Sweigart, in the same thread, raised the underlying procedural question:

So, I think this brings up an interesting question of when is an item consensed? If it is consensed when a call for consensus is made and no one blocks, then it's obvious that consensus has been reached. But if consensus is made when the meeting adjourns and no one has blocked, then James coming in later to block obviously blocks it... Otherwise, if I can block something after consensus has been reached, could I block something that was consensed on at the last week's meeting? Last month's meeting?

The thread ends unresolved. The wiki diff Kevin links to is no longer accessible in the current mirror. Whether "consensus was reached" or "James blocked" remains contested in the archived record itself.

Deflection and Irony

The governance conversation dismissed as too serious, as "just labels," or as someone else's problem.

Throughout the mailing list record, a recurring move: participants respond to governance debates not by engaging the substance but by signaling that the conversation itself is misplaced — too earnest, too label-obsessed, or easily resolved by the questioner leaving.

October 2009: “Consensus and the old ways”

By October 2, 2009, the governance thread had accumulated 80 messages. Christie Dudley opened her contribution by noting this, then addressed the critics directly:

Christie Dudley, October 2009:

Dunno if you noticed, but we're not the only hackerspace in the area. For all these new/non members who are throwing about how they hate our "anarchist" ways, I recommend you check out Hacker Dojo. I hear they do things differently there.

July 2013: “Anarchist? Libertarian?”

The identity thread of July 2013 drew a cluster of responses that deflected the debate itself. Several arrived within hours of each other on July 31.

Snail, July 31, 2013 — disclosing the origin of the “libertarian” text that had triggered the thread:

TBH, I added that quote to the wiki when a handful of us were brainstorming possible alternative bylaws that would satisfy California 501c3 requirements without being a boring, dull template... This was not because we agreed with the statement 100% but because we wanted to not go overboard. I don't think we were aiming to make Noisebridge more or less anarchist than we were aiming to amuse ourselves.

That wiki page also states I am a facist, which may or may not be true.

j. grenzfurthner/monochrom (das ende der nahrungskette), same thread — the complete text of the reply:

Never forget...

http://monochrom.at/blog/gallery/1/monochrom--neverforget.png

The linked image is a satirical artwork. The message contributes no text to the governance debate.

Methodology

This page was produced in a single research session on 2026-02-22/23 by nthmost using Claude Code (Claude Sonnet 4.6, Anthropic). The following describes how the source material was gathered and processed.

Sources

Noisebridge wiki mirror

A full local mirror of the Noisebridge wiki (5,077 pages as of 2026-02-09) was maintained using a custom backup script querying the MediaWiki API. A differential backup pulling pages changed since 2026-02-09 was run on 2026-02-22, retrieving 17 recently-edited pages.

Mailing list archives

The complete public archive of the noisebridge-discuss mailing list was downloaded from the Mailman pipermail interface at lists.noisebridge.net/pipermail/noisebridge-discuss/. This comprised 164 monthly .mbox files covering November 2007 through May 2022, totaling approximately 459 MB.

Scanning

Wiki scan

All 5,077 wiki pages were scanned using regular expression search for the term anarchi (case-insensitive), returning 674 files with at least one match. These were filtered to exclude meeting notes pages, then sorted by match density to identify pages primarily about anarchism. A second pass scanned meeting notes pages separately using both an anarchism pattern and a broader "practice-without-the-label" pattern covering terms such as do-ocracy, structureless, horizontal organization, mutual aid, prefigurative, and consensus in proximity to governance-related terms.

Mailing list scan

The 164 mbox files were scanned using a Python script that split each file into individual messages via regex on the mbox From_ separator, decoded message payloads (handling quoted-printable, base64, and multiple charsets), stripped quoted reply lines and boilerplate footers, and extracted 300-character context windows around each match. 2,116 messages matched across 128 months. Results were saved to a structured JSON file organized by month.

Selection and extraction

The scan results were reviewed to identify the highest-density months and thread subjects. Key threads were pulled in full and read for direct quotes. Threads selected for this page were chosen because they contained the most substantive community articulation of anarchist theory or practice — not because they represented any particular position. Where multiple messages in a thread made the same point, a representative quote was chosen.

All quoted text appears verbatim from the source, with no paraphrasing. Ellipses are not used; quotes are either complete sentences or clearly end mid-sentence where the scanner's context window cut off.

What was not included

The mailing list scan returned 2,116 matching messages. The vast majority are passing references — someone using the word "anarchist" as an adjective, or quoting a prior message. This page draws on perhaps 30–40 messages that contain substantive argument. The meeting notes scan returned 267 hits across 183 files; only a fraction of these appear here.

No attempt was made to assess the representativeness of the voices quoted. Prolific mailing list participants (Al Sweigart, Danny O'Brien, Johny Radio) are over-represented relative to their share of the community simply because they wrote more. The page documents the conversation that was recorded, not the full range of views held by people who were present but did not write.

See Also

• Anarchy
• Do-ocracy
• Consensus
• Anarchy_Paralysis
• Against Policy
• Anarchist_Hackers
• Consensus_history
• Noisebridge