jessamyn

Sometimes librarians are also those things.

Access to the courts is something guaranteed by the Constitution (standard disclaimer about the shape THAT's in). Usually googling "File a small claims case" and your state name will get you started. Here are the steps.

http://www.civillawselfhelpcenter.org/self-help/small-claims...

They sent me a W-9 to fill out. I think they might actually pay.

When that article was originally written I think it had to do with coming out very strongly against the USA PATRIOT Act which seems like pretty standard stuff now but in the wake of 9/11 being really mouthy about it was less typical.

So far it is holding firm in the 800+ range. This was part of my deal, my credit rating is GOOD and I'd like to hold on to it.

I know this is nitpicking but I did not pay for any identity insurance. I said that if I had to, it would cost this amount and offered low end and high end costs for this. The judge decided to add these numbers together as if I had paid for it and awarded that to me (and I was clear about this in court, I did not fudge it to make it look like I had paid)

I sort of feel "let a million lawsuits bloom" I think there's a usefulness in the death by 1000 cuts approach and I think there will be class action cases whether or not 100 or 1000 people decide to sue in small claims. I also think the schema is a little different (tho I am not a lawyer) so you can make somewhat different arguments and claims.

I was happy with how this went and the coverage has been nice.

Banner's been there for at least a week.

Can't recall, but maybe? We have people all over the map in terms of conservatism in a fiscal sense (some but not many Libertarians, in the US sense) but socially it's a pretty liberal place, so it depends what the overlap is between those things for a lot of people.

If it's useful, here's the MeFi post on the same article.

http://www.metafilter.com/153938/No-matter-where-I-am-the-pu...

Thanks -- I feel very strongly that you can't deal with digital divide issues without dealing with people's emotional issues surrounding technology.

Also, everything I learned about teaching tech I feel like I got from Phil Agre.

http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/how-to-help.html

IronMouth I think? I don't mod there anymore and haven't in a while but I still see some of the respected conservative commenters there but fewer than in the past.

In smalltown Vermont libraries, we definitely see this as a win-win as long as there is funding for it. The big deal with hackerspaces is making sure they're accessible to everyone (sometimes tricky but a mandate of what a public library needs to do) and inclusive (so not just technically possible for people to use but welcoming to everyone as much as possible).

We've seen people do this well by combining things that are more like toolshops with things that are more like craft and home ec-type spaces (hey it's all about making things) and also recording/video studios. Anything where pooling community resources makes a lot of sense. The big deal is finding the funding and the right people working there to make it all work within library culture as well as within makerspace culture. The two cultures share a lot but there are some non-overlap areas that need to be negotiated well.

In Vermont there are a lot of older people with deep "knowledge of tools" who can find a great slot for them as they may age out of the work-all-day world but can be great mentors to younger folks who might not otherwise have these options. There's also a lot of tech ed where I am, so kids can learn some of this is school which is excellent as well.

Don't think so. I really enjoyed my time there and I still hang out there a lot but it's pretty important to me to be doing "library things" and I couldn't do that and devote the time to modding that the job deserved.

Hey!

<3

I wrote this article and I am pleased with it.

The LoC also gets to decide which things get DMCA exemptions which could be HUGE (and really a license to print money depending how they go). I'm surprised more people aren't really pushing this new appointment to go in some direction.

One of the arguments that they made is that since they didn't have a coffee maker at a low enough price point last xmastime, they lost out on not only the sales but also the people who would have bought coffee because of those sales. They had issues bringing the MINI (the lower price point coffee maker) to market because of some manufacturing issues so they really lost out in the holiday season. So that's a good idea (and the DRM stupid thing is expensive relative to the older model) but apparently wouldn't work.

The waste doesn't HAVE to be the issue since with reusable cups it's actually a decent option because it only heats a small amount of water, doesn't have a heating pad, has auto shutoff, etc. However, the insistence that people use the (worse for the environment) cups because it's more profitable is the real waste thing. You could make a coffee maker one-hitter that made better-than-average coffee, but the sorts of people who go in for Keurig convenience are not the people who care (so much) about these things.

[nb: I wrote this https://medium.com/message/keurig-didn-t-learn-a-damned-thin... My take is a little different from TCs]

Just publicized, did not invent! But thank you very much.

Yeah I think you may be focusing on the "creative art" aspect of this and less on other use cases. My mom is a retired photographer and she loves seeing other people use or repurpose (and yes even sell) some of the pictures she takes. In public libraries we want a way to share images the widest way possible and don't always have our own space to do that.

I get that you're concerned that people don't understand the public domain, but I think the response to that is more (and better) explanations about what it is and why it's important, not disallowing people access to tools that they want on a platform they use.

Yeah you can just keep the old style if you want to. It's the one I still use.

Thanks, that's really sweet, but it's been almost a decade and it's definitely time. I've got some stuff coming up (will post more about it later on so as not to take any of the attention away from mathowie's post) which is all good news. It was really time for me to get a little more librarianing in.

I'm jessamyn the other other mod. We're lucky in that we're not angling for selling the place to some giant other site, so we can manage the community we have and not just push for growth non-stop. Matt is a great guy and has a pretty light touch with the site: basic trust; "please don't be an asshole"; and then a progressive series of time-outs to try to get people who have a hard time understanding how the site works to get to still stay there. And that's it, no cutesy vowel-removal, no hard-line hellbans.

It's really rare that, with the exception of spammers and self-linking douchebags, we have to forcibly tell someone to leave. I always figure we're doing something right if people on both sides of whatever argument people are having think we're favoring the other side.

The really big thing we "do" such as it is, is spend a lot of time in MetaTalk, the part of the site that is dedicated to community discussion of etiquette, bugs and sitewide norms. All of our moderator decisions can, if people want, be discussed there. This can be a pretty under-the-microscope why-did-you-say-it-this-way sort of thing, but it usually involves a lot of people talking about why the guidelines are the way they are.

And if you just want to read the site, or answer a question on Ask MetaFilter, you can ignore the navel gazing part of the site entirely.

My favorite thing about MeFi is the high conversion factor. That is, lots of people meet online but then go on to become friends or associates or colleagues or coworkers in real life. I love internet land, but I think there's got to be crossover between that and the big blue room and we have a lot of that which I think, in turn, reinforces community trust and cohesion.