Criticism of DMS leadership must be especially tolerated

Part of the proposed bylaw changes include

The Secretary may require members in good standing calling for Member Meetings via petition to pay the costs of notification prior to scheduling such a meeting.

Since regular member meetings have been nixed, member meetings may cost money for a member to raise concerns to the voting membership.

Membership meetings are different than other events on the calendar in that they require notice. Notice must be sent to all voting members in some manner.

I suggested over a year ago that we get all voting members to sign something or click something verifying the method of notification they want. We wouldn’t have to incur cost but no one has been willing or able to setup something.

The board and officers are not required to be at membership meetings, only the President to lead the meeting. I personally think we as a membership should be able to vote to who leads the meetings and how they would be held. It is one of the few ways that the membership gets a real voice. Office hours are ran by the board and officers not the membership. In order for the membership to be able to decide if they need to remove board members, they need information and the ability to speak freely to each other.

So to sum up. No, another forum or event does not do the same because of notice and the power vested in member meetings.

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Additionally, it appears that some of the other proposed bylaw changes include limiting what membership meetings can talk about.

This is the point where he starts replying to himself, folks. I know it’s tempting to point out how foolish his points are, but resist!

It’s the only way he gets the message and pipes down.

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I’m not remotely “on the spectrum” (aside from a touch of unmedicated ADHD) so I don’t have a dog in this hunt.

But what I’ve observed is that those who are aren’t necessarily aware of it. I think a bit of patience and kindness is in order. I have found myself leaning toward exactly the opposite in frustration, but realized that my frustration can’t possibly be as deep as theirs.

We need to slow down and be patient.

This is a reply to one comment. I have not read the entire thread, which would likely be a waste of my time. So this reply might seem like a non sequitor. Sorry.

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I do not understand your apparent hostility to Draco across multiple threads. Maybe I am missing something but I have always found Draco to be reasonable. It feels like punching down. Is there something wrong with adding one more thought to a post?

We are all free to our own opinions. I’ve never known Draco to express one I found interesting or useful. Your mileage may vary.

Then you don’t know him very well.

Look, we are 64 posts deep into a post that claims you can’t criticise the board, clearly you can… for reference please see the entire thread above. Or any number of other discussions on talk.

Above Draco claims that by holding open public office hours meetings we are somehow preventing open discussion. That’s insane. Those meetings,in addition to these posts on talk are how we communicate. Hell it’s how your committee got it’s lab, Raffi and Doug came to us with a plan, we listened and we got the lab set up and ready based on what they proposed. Draco just has sour grapes because we heard his idea and no one on the board or in the membership supported it.

Here is some back story for you. Draco rage quit last summer because he reached out to me on Facebook messenger to berate me for the boards action banning Stan Simmons because he had been stealing from us for over a year. I said, he was stealing and it’s our fiduciary duty as board members to protect the space from things like that. He blocked me, unfriend me and quit all in like 5 minutes.

Draco thought that kicking out a person who used their admin privileges to commit wire fraud and repeatedly issue himself several hundred dollars in fake gift cards to pay his dues for over a year was a bridge to far. Stan was interviewed directly, given a hearing and chose not to show to present his case. Draco knew all of this. Given all the facts Draco came to the conclusion that the board was the bad guys, not the guy committing wire fraud to steal services from a charity.

He only rejoined the space after we took disciplinary action against Kris Anderson. He’s only here to troll. So you will have to excuse us if we get terse when dealing with his attempt to troll us.

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I’m not certain what you are referring to. I had nothing to do with the lab creation or proposal. We had discussed as a committee moving out of the old lobby into the old 3d fab but that was the last I remember.

Board office hours are for members to come talk to the board. So far, it has been a success and I have actively advertised it when the board didn’t.

Board of Directors Office Hours - 08/17/2019 - Conference Room (North Lobby)
Next Board Office Hours - Sat Sep 7 1pm — 3pm Purple Classroom
Board of Directors Office Hours - Talk to the Board

Members have power in member meetings not in board office hours. Members get notified (or are suppose to) about member meetings. It is a forum for member to discuss concerns with other members.

This board chose to first try and direct them, granted the President resides over them per the rules but the subjects should be member driven. For the most part, they were but not to the liking of Julie, James and Lara who kept trying to redirect the many topics to board office hours instead of allowing discussions to continue, at least in the last member meeting I was a part of. As I said before, they later canceled them in favor of board office hours.

It is true that I contacted you on FB in November as I had many times before. It is not true that I blocked you. You blocked me. I just verified this today. It is also not true that I quit at that time. I quit in early October. It was in November that I told you that I wanted you out of office and that you have gone too far. Stan was only the last straw as they say of a large stack. Get your facts straight.

As far as Stan, and I have said this many times before and I really don’t care to delve into again but I will say this. I agree he should have been punished, his admin rights removed and his CC taken and I think he should have been made to pay back what gift cards he took. He should not have been perm-banned.

Why is it, whenever you have a different view, you are accused of trolling?

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I’m referring to Dracos rule change proposal he brought to a member meeting and an office hours meeting.

Every single meeting we have had has been posted on the calendar. Dracos posts are redundant.

To which only Draco is complaining. No one was attending the monthly member meetings. They were attending the office hours. Dracos argument that we should continue a meeting because it’s “where the membership has power” is pointless if the membership wasn’t attending the meeting, and prefers to work their goals through office hours. The membership has accomplished more through office hours than through any recent member meetings.

Draco is somewhat right here. Draco quit after harassing me on my personal Facebook account about “kicking out a member” who actually quit first. We only kicked him out when it was found he had stollen a MacBook pro.
Draco was also yelling at me for not telling him information about a member who victimized another member because he was trying to defend the victimizer and would have caused the victim additional trauma had he kept on that path. That’s when Draco actually quit.
Dracos exact words when I told him to stop barking up that tree were:

Let me quit before you make talking a bannable offence … I will try when another board gets in office … if there is anything left after this one … Good Bye

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Draco. A man who rage quits because his friends got kicked out for stealing a computer and for not being able to victim shame.

I blocked Draco in November after he quit when he started harassing me about Stan

And keep in mind people, this is on my personal Facebook. When Draco couldn’t get the membership to care about his “important” stuff he took it out on the board on their personal channels.

A question for you Draco.
How much stealing is ok? This wasn’t his first abuse of our systems, they are all previously documented in the wiki. If a little bit of stealing is ok, how many times should he be allowed to do it before it’s too much? Enlighten us all.

Why is it when you rage quit because your palls got disciplined, and then rejoin when the last one gets disciplined, only to get on talk and throw stones at the people that enforce the rules, you are accused of trolling.
Fixed it for you…

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More details… OMG… total ugliness… Thank you BOD for taking care of the unpleasant tasks of theft of money and property and the victimization of others.

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It’s because people cannot leave well enough alone. Not a conspiracy just trying to keep some dirty laundry private. Not everyone needs to know the victim(s) of harassment or the gory details. That is up to them and the police.

Etc., etc.

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Ken, I’ll clarify… by “more details…” I mean OMG, more details have come out", not a request for more details. I’m glad there’s someone here willing to deal with the folks that need pruning from the organization.

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I can honestly say that even with all the difficult issus we have had to deal with this term it’s been an honor to serve.

Especially during this current quarantine. Getting to be a part of member driven good has been an honor.

Be it @Hardsuit and @Print_Witch setting up sewing training for masks, or people @PearceDunlap, @HankCowdog, @themitch22 and others helping mass produce 3d printed face shields. Or the anonymous donations we have helped facilitate from members to members in need.

I’m probably missing a bunch of great people that are contributing so I apologise to anyone I’ve missed. I’ll say this, the vast majority of our members are awesome people.

I hope everyone understands that the board isn’t here for “power” we are here because we believe in the organization. we listen to the membership and try to do what’s best for the organization and the membership.

Threads like this can be productive, and we don’t discourage legitimate discourse here or at office hours.

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It sounds as though there was a personal falling out. With regard to the subject at hand, I appreciate mrjimmy’s commitment to propriety. Part of proper governance is that those who have action taken against them have the option of making their case to the membership whether that be on talk or in a scheduled meeting. This is especially the case when the member in question has a complaint against some action taken by the leadership. This obviously doesn’t apply to matters where the facts are beyond question and that need to be handled by the courts.

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This is the last I’m going to say about this.

Stop accusing me of wanting theft or people stealing or wanting victims names to be released. I had no idea of the underlying circumstances.

I suggest you stay on topic and stop attacking me personally.

It’s not an attack. It’s context to provided people with an understanding of your motivation in pushing for criticism of the current board.

You present yourself as a champion of right and good, but when people see the truth of your behavior and motivation they can see for themselves what kind of person you actually are.

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Why dont you run for board? I’m not being sarcastic. If you really feel that the last few haven’t been open or fair, why not try it?

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I think we’re pretty much saying the same thing, however my take is that the responsibility goes both ways.

Some 20 years ago I was living in a cheap apartment with poor sound attenuation between units. It wasn’t so bad that after the conclusion of your neighbors’ typical Friday night festivities you felt compelled to smoke a cigarette, but without any real concentration you might notice that they changed their rhythm up. An immediate neighbor was having a loud get-together one evening and the SO compelled me to go knock on their door and ask them to keep it down. I knocked on the door and before I could get say much anything out the resident invited me in. I found myself the tenth person present with roughly zero demographic overlap relative to others present; I was acutely aware that the ~10% influence I might expect to exert ceteris paribus was actually less than 10% due to these differences. I largely failed in my mission per my SO, but it was an interesting lesson in group dynamics and I do regret not keeping up with that neighbor after they moved out.

Back to the principle - my neighbor and their friends admitted me into their gathering without reservation or hostility. However I absolutely had to accept things on their terms - which due to demographic differences meant some degree of discomfort on my part and theirs. There was some inevitable explicit and implicit highlighting of differences, but it never became a point of contention. At the end I think we all decided that despite our differences, we’re just people in the end.

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This describes many of my interactions at DMS. In some ways I feel that those differences are part of DMS’s strength as a community, as long as everyone can be accepting and non-judgmental (or at least tolerant).

Let’s go make something.

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I’m glad you suggest this. I have suggested the same in the last year to several folks who I feel like to complain about leadership, but don’t want to bother getting involved. If you seek change you absolutely have to get involved. Otherwise your complaining is just lip service. Its a ton of work and can be physically and emotionally draining. To date not a single one of them have taken the suggestion to heart.

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