Discuss this announcement here.
Quote ārepeated verbal and mental abuse of our current and past volunteersā
The answer to this is to terminate the membership of anyone who abuses members/volunteers. No close the storage space.
I think the pendulum has now swung waaaaaaaaaaay too far to the other side from where it was 3 months ago.
From my vantage point, the people that implemented the new policy (not sure who they are) went waaaaaaaay overboard and did a TERRIBLE job communicating, especially early on. Note: I am totally on board with the new rules - but communication really sucked.
3 months ago, I couldnāt get a storage space to save my soul. Now there are lots of open slots!! So something is working.
Does this mean that we canāt leave glue ups on tables overnight?
No I donāt want to be on the storage committee. I already volunteer in other areas and do not want to invest more time at DMS.
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I agree with this wholeheartedly, but practically this hasnāt happened and we tried to do this (or at least ban people from Storage), many months ago when I was still helping out at the space. All I got for volunteering my time and trying to help (with permission) was threats (from board members and officers at the time).
I think the blanket decision to just shut it down is a far more sane choice, and will overall be less drama and issues. Maybe a year without Short-Term storage will give people time to actually come up with a better plan and think things through (And then enforce said rules from day one).
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Hi Dan,
As James mentioned in his forum post, this has been a reoccurring issue for the past decade that has spanned multiple boards and multiple logistics heads. Even if the bad actors have their memberships terminated or are otherwise disciplined, the problem will still continue as new bad actors will come in and harass the storage volunteers. In a space of 2000 members, we only have a fraction of the space needed for long term storage, so this is bound to happen. This is a larger problem and we need to figure out a sustainable solution for the long run.
To be clear, the new rules were a slight modification of the existing rules that have existed since 2022. You can check the version history on source to verify and we have had existing flyers in the workshop area that people ignored for months on end.
Announcements were done on talk and discord multiple times before enforcement began, and projects were tagged and verified before being disposed of. Based on member feedback, we extended the violation grace period to a week and sent out texts from the DMS phone number to remind members to pick up their projects.
Thereās only so much we can do to reach out to other people, especially when personal safety is a concern (we have has fights in the past over storage, and I was not going to put my team at risk), and at the end of the day, it is up to each member to remember their storage and to clear out within the allotted time.
Glueups overnight are fine, and you can email [email protected] if you have a special circumstance like a family emergency, hospital visit, etc.
The goal of project storage is to be continuously working on a project and have it at the space for a short amount of time, not to leave your lumber there, forget about it for a month, and then come back.
We also donāt want to manage storage either, and it is incredibly draining having to deal with people who berate you, swap tags, complain on talk, do character attacks, stage photos, etc. on top of the day long cleanups required for the volunteers.
Iād much rather have logistics be doing improvements to the space like fixing up plumbing, repairing holes in the wall, etc. than continuing to maintain an area that is effectively unmanageable.
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The problem is not storage (In fact as far as I am concerned storage if fixed!!! Thank you) Its the abusive behavior that is the problem taking storage away will not solve the abuse problem. In fact I am concerned that the board is ok with abuse of volunteers. Iām not sure I want to volunteer anymore.
So the answer is to allow abuse because someone might come in later and abuse people? That is absurd. Get rid of the bad actors now and in the future - I suspect it is a very small percentage of the population - 1% maybe 1/2 of a percent? Once you start throwing out abusive members, word will get around and it will be very rare in the future.
People will get away with what you let them - if you let them keep storage areas for months on end - they will. If you let them abuse you - they will. Stop the insanity. You are a board member for Godās sake. Donāt put up with it.
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Yes the rules didnāt change much - the enforcement did. It went from nothing to draconian, Thatās a big big change.
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Itās a long and complicated history, especially with older more problematic boards. I donāt need to dig up old wounds, but there has been a lot of politics and drama centered around storage.
The current board has stated that they 0 tolerance for harassment of volunteers at the space, as they are its lifeblood. Thus, the board is taking a firm public stance in support of its volunteers as a show of solidarity.
The abuse is already covered under our anti-harassment policies and the board has already taken disciplinary action in this matter. As a reminder, in the future, if anyone harasses or attempts to bully any volunteers at the space, they will also face disciplinary action.
Agreed. Storage became an untenable mess in large part due to the 0 enforcement in the past few months.
It is, but there was really no other way to ease into it, as people kept on abusing the rules, swapping tags, etc.
Sorry - your communication plan is not enough. Where is the requirement for the members to read TALK or even sign in? The signage on the racks were woefully inadequate for the first 30 days of the change in enforcement - now there are small signs that point to the new rules better but not big enough or colorful enough. There should have been big signs in every rack āStorage rules changing, storage enforcement changing - see QR codeā.(I am the sign guy for the woodshop - had you asked I would have volunteered to do it). But nowhere does it say that the level of enforcement was going to change. Especially when stuff gets thrown out. A change in enforcement that big need an email to all members.
Managing change is hard. Communication is key. Lots of communiction - you know youāve done enough communication when people complain there is too much communication.
Donāt get me wrong - i love the new enforcement - it worked! There is storage space available - I commend you! The communication plan not so much.
BTW - what is discord?
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Iāll make some signs in a couple hours when i get there, unless someone beats me to it.
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Welp thatās a bummer. I donāt own a car big enough to fit woodshop projects in. I havenāt used project storage since covid but do have something I was wanting to build once it got cooler. But I donāt have any way to transport the in progress item back and forth (would borrow a car for pickup when it would be done). I guess Iāll have to find somewhere else to make it.
I wish people didnāt suck and ruin things for others.
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I drive a fiat, so I understand the problems of hauling supplies back and forth.
Iām hoping that this measure will lead to a change in the mindset of people that use the storage.
What I am hoping is that by the next board meeting we have a member driven proposal to reopen the storage with rules that the membership themselves help develop. My hope is that if the people that use and rely on storage being available can come together they can propose something that is more volunteer friendly and supportable within our community.
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Has someone documented what has been tried as well as the reasons they failed? That way no one wasted time on proposals that wonāt get approved.
Plus any legal restrictions. I know people have proposed like, auctioning abandoned projects before or just tossing stuff in the dumpster and irrc that has always been a no because of āownershipā issues
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We will be calling storage that exceeds the date āabandoned propertyā. Much like any storage unitā¦
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We are not OK with mistreatment of volunteers. We have a very well documented history of kicking people out for that.
The problem we are dealing with is that even without intentional rule breakers storage is a stress to manage. Everyones storage starts on different days so policing accurately it is near impossible, even if a volunteer sets a specific date, life happens and inspections get missed. The work piles up and then when a volunteer gets to it the reactions tend to be unfavorable with a lot of āwhy are you enforcing the rules nowā sort of complaints.
Even when people arenāt actively breaking the rules its a hard task for volunteers to manage. When you add on people moving tags to start problems with the volunteers and posting theft accusations it becomes clear that we are dealing with two problems. The first is a workload issue, we need a new plan and possibly new rules to deal with that. The second is dealing with the harassers, we have delt with that as well in this case and will deal with it if it comes up again.
Since you are an active member and familiar with the storage challenges from an end users perspective I think your input would be great in helping build a more supportable set of storage rules. If you can, work with the other storage users and give us a plan to work with. We will support a member driven solution to this, in fact I prefer that to the whack-a-mole rule patches we have been working with for the last 10 years.
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That is a good suggestion, We havenāt done it yet, but I have a lot of that history so I will try and write that down, and try and create a scope document for people to brainstorm off of.
@mrjimmy Thanks for the explanation - it is much better and more reasoned that the one posted on the announcement. You should consider updating the announcement with your explanation.
I will think about a solution. But no guarantees. Would like to see the list of things that has been tried.
I do think that just consistently enforcing the rules sends a message and increases compliance. Witness the amount of space in storage after two months of enforcement. But I get that it is volunteer org and consistent enforcement is a challenge.
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Ladybird was so small that storage was only for 1 week, and then the dumpster. That where the one fight I am aware of happened. Somebodyās expensive wood went into the dumpster, and they recognized it being used by the person who had retrieved it.
Iām not sure that it was regulated in the early days here. One was supposed to put a card with your name on your stuff. When Alan took it over, he found one dude whoād saved himself a bunch of room with one chunk of wood, etc., and a card for every slot.
Alanās plan was to clear storage once every 30 days. There was a storage meeting on a specific day, and you could ask for an extension.
I think Eric was next. Same basic plan 30 days, ask for extension.
Kris Anderson ran it while she was president, with Axeounos being the front person. 30 days, and she was contacting people about their stuff. Lots of stuff sat around for quite a while.
Then - Pierce? 30 days and thatās it. No extensions, and he was trying to keep out repeat users so you didnāt bring back the same project. I wasnāt a fan. If a person has a life, they may not be able to finish something in a month.
Seems like Justin was next. I was reasonably fond of his method. 30 days, going by your original date, and then your project had to leave the building for at least a couple of days. Woodshop was telling folks 3 days. I think Justin said 5 days. Clearing was done weekly. Although, that means more looking at everything, but with less stuff leaving each time.
Joshās effort was going to work around the kiosk system. That didnāt get running, so there was a long period of storage not being cleared out.
I havenāt tried the Burt storage setup, so Iām not sure of the rules or effectiveness.
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Actually in this case we were trying to do storage manually aside from this. The problem was that I kept getting pushed back on just about everything anytime I went through it. When we finally actually started throwing things away shortly thereafter, storage got ripped away from us and drama ensued.
The automated kiosk was primarily for the short-term storage which had very much been working, but I could never get the logistics officer sitting down long enough to actually plan out any of the remaining stuff. We did have it working for long-term storage as well, but when I brought it up to a couple people there was a very underwhelming response/ How many issues itāll cause/ oh thereās legal concern and so on.
Iāve learned my lesson volunteering for DMS -shrug-
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We have had two separate auto kiosks previously. The Brandon Green version & Bill Gee @Bill correct me if Iām wrong on yours. Both systems that were auto kiosk were next person in charge didnāt like it.
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There was some kind of spat and Brandon removed his. It had been working well.
I took the voting rights and AD lookup kiosk and morphed it into one to print storage tickets. Luke Strickland was managing storage when it was placed into service. As far as I know, it was used until storage was shut down during the pandemic.
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