Space-labeling-draft

What

The hackerspace has become more and more full with tools, gear, projects over the years. Some of this is a good thing, but it presents challenges. Ownership of items is sometimes unclear, as well as the status of the item in the space. Is it inventory ? Is it maintained ? Is it donated 'junk' that can be re-purposed ? Is a new tool that appears in the dirty room in a functional state at all, or did someone leave it there in the hope that 'someone' will fix it ?

Since ownership and status is unclear, nobody is really feeling entitled to take ownership of the situation when they find something 'abandoned', or just broken. What to do ? Who to inform ?

A system is proposed here to address some of these issues through interaction between labelling, processes, documentation.

Goals

The design goals of the proposal outlined below are the following:

• When you find an item, it should be clear 'what it is'. Where 'what' includes:
  • Ownership (Space-owned ? PRivate ? Who ?)
  • Status (inventory, private project, donated hackable-stuff, etc)
  • Usability (functional ? Broken ? Dangerous ?)

• It should be possible, through following a process, to find a way to get rid of (unwanted/broken) items
  • It should be transparent just how the procedure works, before, during and after its application
  • It should give enough time for owners/involved-parties to come forward

• It should be easy and inviting to apply parts of the process to encourage its adoption
  • Labeling/adding should be almost 'free' in terms of labor involved.
  • Unlabeled, un-identifiable things should carry a 'penalty' in some form, giving an incentive

• Any 'identification'-scheme (labels, writing, qr-code, rfid, whatever) should allow for integration to other processes/tools.
  • Allows for re-use of data, cross-linking.

Design

A proposed design to enable all of the above design-goals is listed here.

In short:

• Items are assumed to be labeled by default
• Unlabeled items will enter a process with identification and labeling as the end-goal
• It should be possible for any member to start this process, either directly or indirectly
• The process should be 'trackable', preferably on a mailinglist.

Method:

Another hackerspace (forgot name/link), has a system where they use colored labels as 'parking tickets'.

• Green: Item is 'approved' for staying. Has a reference and end-date listed
• Orange: Item is defective/broken. It serves as warning
• Blue: Item is un-identified at current.. People are requested to come forward and help get it identified
• Red: Item is marked for removal

The scheme's description does not list