Why do we have a 3 month waiting period to become a Keyholder?

Part of the VHS culture series

Currently
Currently to become a VHS key holder member you need to join VHS as a normal member ($25 a month). Wait three months, hopefully in this three month period you come down to a few open houses, events and make friends. After the three month waiting period you can apply in the VHS members section of the forums to become a key holder member. (please post a picture of yourself, it makes it easier to recognize you)

  • If no one vets you, your application is rejected, you can try again sometime in the future. (so far its never happened)
  • If a single person (member, or keyholder) has a problem with you, your application is rejected, you can try again sometime in the future. (so far its never happened)

After a week, if you get a few people to vet you, and no one objects, you become a key holder member and get a key.

History
Originally this system was set up when VHS was a much smaller organization. We only had a few members and these members kept some of their expensive personal tools at the space. When a new member applied for a membership we wanted to get to know them first, before giving them a key. This was to help make sure that they fit in the VHS culture and that they didn’t steal all of our tools or sleep at the space. This also was based on the “Web of trust” system that was popular with all the open source and security guys at the start.

When we were less than 20 people and someone applied to become a normal member, we would take them out for beers at a near by pub and really get to know them over a few hours. This really helped build culture, good friends and a tight nit group of people that knew each other.

As we grew bigger it become harder to know everyone and prohibitively expensive (to my pocket and my health) to take everyone out for beers to get to know them. When we hit around ~30 members, It become harder to know everyone in the group and with so many guests coming in each tuesday night it was impossible to keep track of everyone. Even with a three month waiting period, sometimes someone would apply and I wouldn’t know them. Other people would vet them and I would assume that they were good people.

There has only been one key holder that has been “asked” to leave and @funvill tried to ban him (unsuccessfully). He is no longer a member. He was vetted by ~6 people including @funvill, who eventually petitioned for his ban. The vetting system doesn’t always work.

When we moved in to the bunker (270 east 1st) we revisited the three month probation for new members. VHS needed an influx of new members to help cover the shortfall on rent. We considered dropping this rule to help get more key members but ended up keeping it in because of the fear of theft.

Problems

  • The vetting system doesn’t always work - Sometimes bad people get in and we don’t have a good mechanism to get rid of them
  • The process is slow - This deters people from joining to build an awesome project that has a close due date. This also prevents us from doing a membership drive for people to become key holder members.
  • We are too large to know everyone that joins the space - Often when people ask to become a key member, I personally have never had a conversation with them in three months.
  • Its awkward - It is an awkward system that relies on you getting people to vet you, and people can deny you for no reason. It feels like you need to beg people to be your friends so you can use their tools.

Question

  • Should we change this system?
  • Do you have any questions about the history or the process?

I think having a waiting period is definitely a good idea. It ensures
that people who want to be a keyholder are committed to it. We probably
don’t have any hard numbers on this, but how many people do you think
have signed up with the intention of becoming keyholders – but don’t
after realizing they can only make it to the space one day a month?

The vetting process is a good idea too. I think the problem isn’t with
the idea of vetting – maybe the process needs a few tweaks. Maybe for
someone to deny a prospective keyholder they need an actual, objective
reason. They need to be able to show why they think the member
will be a detriment ( or actively harmful ) to the space.

I don’t think that knowing everyone that joins the space is that much of
an issue. While it would be nice, I don’t think it’s a realistic
goal. If there’s been issues in the past with someone after they became
a keyholder, then maybe there needs to be a procedure for revoking
keyholder-ship. Having toxic members is worse than no members.

With regards to how slow the process is - I don’t think it’s that much
of an issue. Or at least, I haven’t seen it being an issue. If there’s a
person ( or team ) who want to use the space because they’d like to work
on something awesome, why can’t they get in touch ( using this fancy new
system, or the awesome that is IRC ) and just ask a keyholder to open
the space for them?

Lastly, I don’t think we should be thinking about membership drive for
keyholders – we should have membership drives to get people to be
members, period. If we grow our membership, then a certain number of
them will want to become keyholders. It’s like the involvement rates
for forums: 90% of your users will be lurkers, 5% will comment
occasionally, 4% will post and comment occasionally, and 1% will create
90% of the content that gets seen. You can’t change the ratios, you
can only change how many people are members. In the same vein, I
don’t think aiming to have more keyholders should be our goal –
I think we should aim to have more members in general. That way,
we don’t end up with a group of keyholders who rarely or never
use the space and a tiny group of potential keyholder members who
can’t become keyholders because we’ve reached a limit*.

* Two assumptions there, of course: 1) that keyholders are people who
regularly use the space, and 2) that there’s a limit to the number of
keyholders. Is there a limit?

I like the waiting period. I think it attracts people who have a commitment to the space and I think the vetting process works pretty well. So far, I haven’t noticed any big problems with the type of people being vetted. So if it ain’t broke…

That being said, some further perks for members might be nice. At this point you pay to support the community but there aren’t a lot of discernible differences between that and coming to regular drop in nights. For example, usually you can still attend workshops. And if you don’t need access to the machine shop…“why become a member at all?” may become a question.

This is probably a separate point for discussion though.