User:Nthmost/Membership as Trust Architecture

In March 2019, someone proposed abolishing Noisebridge's Membership structure entirely. This opened the thread — a full analysis of what Membership is, what it does, and why removing it without a replacement tool would be a mistake.

Source: Abolish membership — Wayback Machine archive, March–April 2019

Opening the Thread

OK, so there's the legal issue, "what do we tell the fuzz when they come looking for those Members we mentioned on our bylaws."

Since reality is made of words – and legal entities, double so – I will assume that the solution to this is a matter of manipulating words in one way or another. E.g. if we say, "everyone who walked through the door between one hour ago and the next 10 minutes is a Member", that seems pretty soluble.

(Note: not saying we should literally do that, only that this would constitute one possible working solution out of a very large set of possible coding-in-English solutions.)

The deeper question would be around evaluating what would be lost and gained by dropping the institution of Membership.

We've had part of this conversation in a few places (on Discuss, in person, Slack) already. If I were to sum up the arguments:

- Linguistic constructs like "Membership" only exist insofar as people can discern the concept from other concepts and feel the presence of that concept in a meaningful existential way.

- Since Noisebridge's inception, it was supposed to NOT matter that any given person was a Member in terms of everyday reality.

- Since post-Reboot, the creation of the "Philanthropist" concept has induced the concept that there are statuses that DO matter in terms of everyday existence (to wit: RFID tokens).

- If becoming a Philanthropist "matters" in some way, then so too must Membership…

- …but in a Noisebridge where formal Consensus items have been supremely minimized, it's very unclear how becoming a Member matters, or is distinct from Philanthropy.

- Membership as a concept is confusing in relationship to Philanthropy. At a recent General Meeting, it became obvious people couldn't readily discern the idea of one from the other, which is a problem, since – the Philanthropist level being far easier to accomplish – why should anyone brave the more involved process being a Member if it appears to offer nothing over being a Philanthropist?

- Largely because of previous, but also because of a coherent campaign of attack on the integrity of existing Members and/or the integrity of the institution of Membership itself over the past 2 years, Membership has greatly dwindled to the point where it is unusual for newer people to even make contact with people who are Members.

In sum, the arguments I have heard (some of them coming out of my mouth) for abolishing Membership revolve around status confusion, or even status resentment.

The main arguments for keeping Membership:

- Membership at its best represents a longer-term trust network for community that is capable of withstanding the normal ebbs and flows of Noisebridge culture.

- Without it, we might not have a fully functional Consensus organization without entrusted individuals who've been vetted for the trust required for them to be able to potentially Block something.

- Without it, we have to come up with a replacement concept required by our 501c3 legal status.

I wrote all this to help set up the conversation. Now it's your turn!

Philanthropy Is Not Simpler Than It Looks

In short: the Philanthropy construct isn't actually as simple as it seems on its face.

It's a bit like saying, "websites are as easy as putting HTML in a directory!" and neglecting to think about the fact that computers don't just serve up HTML pages when asked unless there's a web server there.

"Why do we need Apache, anyway? It's just taking up a bunch of space…"

Membership Is an Unlimited Resource

Membership is an unlimited resource we can and should scale to as many people as we can confidently extend trust to.

We've never had a "too many Members" problem. Right now we have a "way too few" Members problem.

Occasionally we have a "that person shouldn't have become a Member" problem, which is a problem that, if it is occurring at high frequency, is best solved by improving the vetting process. If it happens once a year or less, that's probably an optimal tuning.

The History of Membership Fluctuation

I'm not sure it's accurate to say Membership itself has ever been much of a problem; it's how we handle what Membership represents and how we award it that fluctuates and generates problems in various ways.

There was a period of time in which people tried to incept the "Council" as a construct, wherein Members became more like Philanthropists are now, and actual participation in Consensus would entail becoming a "Council Member."

This was a very unpopular move, but it gave way to the invention of "Associate Members" later on, which eventually became "Philanthropists".

The reason some people wanted to create a specific "Council Member" designation at the time was that it was felt there were "too many" people who'd achieved Membership and thus "too many" people entitled to being able to block Consensus.

The evidence for there being "too many Members" was that a lot of Members were turning out to be drama queens and shit disturbers. This was early 2014; check the Meeting Notes and you'll see a huge upswing in Consensus Proposals that have something to do with banning a relatively recently-made Member.

The learning we took was that vetting new Members required much more discernment than we'd previously been giving it.

(The Reboot followed a few months after that, which provided sort of a "fresh start" feeling to fleshing out the Membership.)

Agency Belongs to Individuals

IMHO, a hackerspace should always endeavor to keep the sense of agency in the hands of individuals.

See also: User:Nthmost/Things_I_Said • Membership • Consensus