Community Values

Rule Zero

Don't make us create new rules.

• It's great to do novel, interesting, creative things, but not if doing so results in harm, crisis, or disaster.
• Take responsibility for your experiments.
• Take steps to prevent harm.
• Check in with neighbors, passersby, and fellow shop users to see if they're OK with what you're doing, and/or ask if they want protective gear.

Do-ocracy

Wherever practical, those who do the work are granted the autonomy to decide how the work gets done.

• Those doing the work generally deserve the community's help, support, and resources.
  
• This principle is in part about minimizing hierarchy and bureaucracy. We literally and figuratively can't afford an organizational culture full of bureaucratic bottlenecks.
• This principle is active on this Wiki itself, where those who put in the effort to write the Wiki get to decide how the Wiki should be written.

Mutual Aid

We help us. Making things is more about collaboration than competition.

• We're a community workshop, with emphasis on "community".
  
• We're a refuge of community in a world that can be chaotic, oppressive, and isolating to making and makers.
• This principle is active on this Wiki itself, which is a tool of cooperation and mutual aid.

Community Responsibility

Whenever practical, we value distributing widely the work of operating our space and our community.

• A community as large and diverse as ours can never be run by one person or even a small group. It takes the work of every member, every volunteer, to keep this place alive.
  
• Each of our shops is open 24/7/365 and contains many dozens of tools. Maintaining such a shop is far too much for a single person, even if they were there full-time (and they aren't). Each shop is a sub-community, and the work of maintaining and operating the shop is borne by that community.
  
• We rely enormously on volunteer labor. One of the challenges of that is that volunteers are often waylaid by life's other facets--paying work, family, friends, etc. This means we often can't rely entirely on a single volunteer long-term--but in aggregate, together, volunteers have always contributed enormously.
  
• Our biggest asset is us--our community, our people.
• This principle is active on this Wiki itself, which is created and maintained by us all, because it's far too big a project for an individual or small group.

Direct Action

Whenever practical, and within reason, we value acting directly.

• If the shop needs cleaning, we value those who clean it, rather than waiting for permission or instruction to clean it, or suggesting that others clean it.
  
• In concert with the value of community responsibility, direct action doesn't need to mean individual action. If the thing needs maintenance, but you don't know how to do the maintenance, then ask for help! That's still a form of direct action.
• This principle is active on this Wiki itself--if you notice something missing, incorrect, or outdated, you're empowered to fix it, rather than asking someone else to fix it for you.

Refuge

Many of us have been shunned, bullied, or exiled because of our differences, so we embrace differences in others and welcome the nerds, the dorks, the special, the different, the othered.

• We're all nerds about something--that's what brings us together in community.
• We're all different in some way--that's what makes each of us special, it's part of what we have to offer the community.
• To reach sustainability, we have to grow our community. To grow our community, we have to welcome the new and the different into our midst.
• This principle is active on this Wiki itself--nobody is an expert on every Wiki topic, so we have diverse experts on diverse topics contributing to the Wiki.