Hi Santa Barbara Hackerspace community and members. We’re now into our sixth year of existence and have grown significantly in that time thanks to you all. As part of that growth we are setting forth some Community Guidelines to help make the space even better. We will be posting this document to sbhackerspace.com/membership. These guidelines are a living document and will be amended and revised as necessary.
TL;DR: Please clean up after yourself, the space does not have a janitor. Everyone can do their small part and help keep the space and equipment safe, clean, and useable. If a member fails to do this bad things will happen (we may throw their stuff away, yell at them, or they could lose their membership).
There are no janitors at the space sotrash cans are taken out by members who want to help out.. If you see a full trash can and want to help keep the space clean, please help out and empty it in the tan dumpster outside. The tan dumpster and blue recycling bin are the space’s refuse repositories.
People frequently throw away food waste into our trash cans. If you do this you must take it to the dumpster by the end of the day. This is why we frequently move trash cans outside, in an attempt to prevent gross smells from being in the classroom/electronics room. Additionally food left in trash cans attracts pests. Please don’t throw away food waste inside. Clean up trash before you leave.
Everyone is responsible for cleaning up their work surfaces. This is especially true in the shop. It is not ok to use saws or make a mess in the shop and then leave it. Sawdust, metal shavings, tools, and all other forms of mess need to be cleaned up before you leave. Remember this is a shared workspace, so even if you are “going to clean up when you’re completely done for the day” everyone else has to deal with your mess for the rest of the time you’re working. Please be considerate and clean up after yourself as soon as possible. There are several shop vacs, brooms, mops, etc in the shop and stored in the restroom cabinet.
Before you make a mess think about where you are about to make a mess. If you are going to create fumes, saw dust, flames, sparks, metal shavings, paint or do something that could damage the work space or any other kind of mess, think about where you are going to do this and pick a place where that mess is appropriate. The classroom and the electronics room are not appropriate places to paint, saw or in general use power tools. The place for making a large mess is most likely outside. If you aren’t sure where you should do a particular task, just ask. Be especially considerate of fumes, gross smells, and other noxious things, remember this is a community space. If you have some spare time and would like to help out, please consider spending a few minutes to sweep a room, the tables, restock paper towels, etc. Your help keeping things clean and organized is a simple thing everyone can do to help out the community.
Unfortunately there are some places in the space where there are lots of stuff in boxes on the floor and shelves which have too much stuff on them. Please don’t add to the mess. We are working on clearing these boxes out and making the shelves more usable, but if people add to the mess it makes it a sisyphean task. Just because an area has boxes on the ground or there is stuff strewn about a shelf does not mean that the area is ok to dump more stuff..
The sink in the kitchen is not a regular sink. It is connected to a sump, not the sewer system. Do not use it for food stuff. Do not leave chemicals or chemistry stuff in the sink.
There are no janitors at the space. All projects must be stored in provided bins in the member storage shelves. There are too many hackerspace members for us to be able to know whose projects or materials are whose; if projects (or materials) are left out overnight without express permission from a board member they will be thrown away. If your project is too large to fit in your member bin then it must be stored in an approved location with an official SBHX authorized sign on it. This sign can be given to you by a board member. Large projects must be authorized by a board member every month and must be labeled with a signed SBHX project sign, which needs to have the date it was authorized, the project owner’s name, as well as the board member who signed off on it. If your project does not have this sign it will be thrown away.
Keeping tools in good working order and putting them away is your responsibility (even if your didn’t find them that way). Please put away tools as soon as you're done with them. Frequently people think “I will put away all the tools when I am done with this project”. This makes sense but what happens in reality is that hours later when you’re cleaning up you forget that several hours ago you went into a different room and took out a bunch of tools and left them there. To prevent this from happening, and to prevent leaving a mess for other people for hours while you finish please clean up as soon as you can. Remember this is a community space.
The hackerspace has lots of cool stuff, and we are trying to keep it that way (as well as improve what we have). If you don’t know how to use a tool ask for assistance, be safe. This is for your safety as well as to protect the tools. If you do break a tool tell someone, many tools have consumable parts and barring gross misuse, a broken tool is not something we will be mad about. We can't fix things we don’t know are broken.
Donated tools and materials are the lifeblood of the hackerspace. We can’t function without them. That said we cannot be a dumping ground for tools and materials, or an e-waste pile. If you want to donate tools and materials, thank you, you’re awesome, but we need a board member to authorize the donation and a place to put the donated material. Remember we don’t have janitors, so if you leave donated materials/tools that we can’t store you are making someone else clean up after you and throw them away.
SBHX has a finite amount of storage space. That said, we also need to store some scrap materials. We are trying to strike a balance between usable space and storing everything we could ever need. The material storage triangle thing is the maximum amount of storage we have for materials. If your stuff doesn't fit then it cannot be stored. If your piece is better then a piece that is currently on there then swap it out. For most materials anything smaller than 1’x1’ is too small to be useful and should be thrown away. Do not pile things on top of the materials storage areas, if it doesn’t fit throw it away. We do not have janitors, we need to clean up after ourselves.
Areas marked with yellow and black tape cannot be blocked with stuff for any reason. This is a safety as well as a clutter issue. There are no janitors at the hackerspace, it is your responsibility to keep the OSHA zones clear and free of stuff.