Missing Stair

Missing Stair

TL;DR

Communities route around harmful individuals the way networks route around damage - but unlike packet routing, social routing costs:

• Bandwidth (emotional labor)
• Node loss (good people leaving)
• Routing overhead (constant workarounds)
• Censorship enforcement (can't name the problem)

A "missing stair" is damage that's been routed around so long it's become load-bearing infrastructure.

How it works: Everyone maintains routing tables (private warnings), new nodes inherit routes without knowing why, and the routing overhead eventually exhausts available bandwidth.

System crashes when: Enough nodes are lost, someone burns out maintaining routes, or damage becomes un-routable.

Fix: Stop routing, address damage directly.

Prevention: Make early naming cheap, treat feelings as valid signals, practice Restorative Communication before crisis, distribute authority to prevent monopolization, act on patterns quickly before routing becomes infrastructure.

The Metaphor

"The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." - John Gilmore

Networks automatically route around failures. No central authority, just distributed resilience. Social networks do this too - but at catastrophic cost.

Missing stair: A person whose harmful behavior everyone routes around instead of fixing. The term comes from a house with a broken stair - everyone learns to step over it, warns newcomers, but nobody repairs it.

Originally described sexual predators in communities ("don't let new women be alone with him"), now applies to any repeated harmful behavior that's tolerated via workarounds rather than addressed.

Harm spectrum: Ranges from severe (assault, violence, stalking) to persistent (harassment, weaponizing processes) to chronic dysfunction (monopolizing resources, repeated conflict escalation, draining disproportionate energy).

Pattern is the same: community routes around the person instead of fixing the damage.

System Costs

BANDWIDTH EXHAUSTION Every node routing around the problem pays continuous cost: remembering who they are, modifying behavior, warning others, managing feelings, absorbing friction. Not one-time - cumulative. Eventually nodes run out of capacity.

NODE LOSS People who can't or won't route just leave. You lose: those most vulnerable, early contributors who bounced, people with energy who left depleted, those who care enough to be hurt. Usually the exact nodes you can't afford to lose. The missing stair acts as a filter, selecting against marginalized people the community claims to want.

ROUTING OVERHEAD Workarounds become significant work: buddy systems, warning networks, projects redesigned to exclude them, event planning around their presence, constant vigilance. The community spends more energy managing the problem than it would take to fix it directly.

BANDWIDTH MONOPOLIZATION One person consumes disproportionate resources: leadership attention, conflict resolution energy, community discussion cycles, emotional labor from multiple people simultaneously. Legitimate work gets deprioritized. The missing stair becomes the organizing principle.

ROUTING TABLE CORRUPTION Warning system has failure modes: not everyone gets warned (especially new people, marginalized folks, those outside certain social circles), warnings get softened ("awkward" vs "predatory"), information lost as people leave, context forgotten. Self-censorship becomes permanent - questioning the workarounds becomes taboo. The routing is now load-bearing.

SYSTEM CRASH Eventually: enough nodes leave that the network dies, someone burns out catastrophically, damage becomes too severe to route around, or external pressure forces action. At this point: fix the damage or accept permanent dysfunction.

Why Communities Protect Missing Stairs

THE EXCELLENT HACKER FALLACY

"But they're such an excellent hacker! We can't afford to lose them!"

They may have valuable technical skills, control important infrastructure, have institutional knowledge, do unglamorous work, bring funding/connections. The community calculates: contribution value vs harm caused.

This calculation typically fails to account for:

• Nodes already driven away
• Potential contributors who never showed up
• Opportunity cost of monopolization (what could happen if others stepped in)
• Compound routing overhead across whole network
• Long-term network health

In hacker/maker spaces, technical skill gets weighted too heavily against social harm. "They're brilliant" becomes justification for tolerating behavior that would be unacceptable from someone less skilled.

The fallacy: Assuming work can only be done by this person, or their contribution outweighs damage. Often when the missing stair is finally removed, others step up and work continues - sometimes better than before.

OTHER TRAPS

Sunk cost: "We've invested so much time trying to work with them." Each new intervention becomes proof of investment rather than evidence of failure.

Fear of conflict: Being accused of unfairness, the person's defensive reaction, community splitting, retaliation, being seen as "starting drama." In consensus-based communities, this fear is paralyzing. Everyone waits for someone else to act.

Misplaced fairness: "Everyone deserves chances." This conflates individual compassion (wanting to believe people can change) with community responsibility (protecting members from harm) with enabling ongoing harm (protecting harmful behavior). You can have compassion for someone's struggles AND recognize they shouldn't be in this community. These aren't contradictory.

Attribution to circumstances: Explaining behavior as neurodivergence, mental health struggles, trauma history, cultural differences, good intentions. May all be true. Still doesn't make behavior acceptable or community responsible for absorbing it indefinitely.

Diffusion of responsibility: No single node feels empowered to act. "I only saw one incident, maybe it's not a pattern." "Others would speak up if it were really serious." "Someone with more authority should handle this." Meanwhile everyone thinks the same thing. The routing continues.

Recognition: Debug Flags

Network-level indicators:

• Private warning networks exist
• People use careful language around certain topics/people
• Attendance patterns shift based on who's present
• Certain spaces/activities de facto off-limits
• Newcomers receive warnings without context
• Long-term members have elaborate "management" strategies
• Good contributors quietly stop participating
• Network can describe problem in detail but won't act

Node-level indicators (you might be witnessing a missing stair if you):

• Receive vague warnings ("just be careful around them")
• Notice elaborate social choreography around the person
• Hear multiple similar stories from different people
• Feel gaslit when public persona doesn't match private warnings
• Notice gut reaction being explained away

Critical indicators (immediate action required):

• Pattern of marginalized people leaving after interactions with this person
• Multiple reports of sexual harassment/assault
• Threats or intimidation
• Behavior that would be criminal outside community context
• Targeting of vulnerable/new members

Intervention Protocols

SEVERITY ASSESSMENT

Immediate removal: Violence, sexual assault, stalking, imminent danger. DO NOT route around. Remove immediately, warn network openly, document everything, support targets, contact authorities if appropriate. The network's comfort with "handling it internally" does not supersede safety.

Urgent response: Discriminatory harassment, abuse of authority, weaponizing processes, hostile environment for marginalized members. Direct conversation with clear boundaries and consequences, temporary removal (ATL) while assessed, community meeting, clear documentation, defined timeline.

Structured intervention: Repeated conflict escalation, monopolizing resources, draining disproportionate energy, inability to collaborate. Individual conversations using Restorative Communication, documented patterns, clear requests for behavior change, accountability structure, timeline for assessment.

STOP ROUTING, START FIXING

Stop: Warning privately without addressing source, modifying activities around one person, explaining away discomfort, waiting for perfect documentation/consensus, treating "avoiding drama" as more important than addressing harm.

Start: Naming the pattern openly, documenting specific incidents, comparing notes with others affected, treating as systems issue not individual failures, taking action proportional to harm.

EARLY INTERVENTION (PREFERRED)

Direct conversation when you notice concerning behavior: "I've noticed [specific pattern]. This impacts me/the community by [specific effect]." Use Restorative Communication framework: observations, feelings, needs, requests. Document conversation and agreements. Set clear boundaries: "If this continues, I will [specific consequence]." Follow through.

If individual intervention doesn't work: Keep dated records, note who else affected/witnessed, document attempts to address, share with trusted community members. Don't wait for "enough" evidence. If you're seeing a pattern, others likely are too.

COMMUNITY-LEVEL INTERVENTION

When individual approaches haven't worked or pattern is widespread: Compare notes, look for patterns across experiences, document aggregate pattern, be specific about impact.

Present to community: Be specific about behaviors not character, focus on impact and pattern not single incidents, name what needs to change (specific observable behaviors), propose clear next steps with defined timeline.

If person commits to change: Specific behaviors to stop/start, timeline for assessment (weeks not months), who observes and reports, clear consequences if pattern continues, regular check-ins.

Be honest: if the accountability structure requires more work than just removing the person, that's data.

WHEN INTERVENTION FAILS

ATL (Ask to Leave): Temporary removal for person to reflect elsewhere, community to recover from routing overhead, assessment of whether change possible. Be specific about: duration (definite timeframe or indefinite pending conditions), what would need to change for return, who decides about return.

86 (Permanent Ban): When harm severe enough to warrant immediate permanent removal, pattern persists despite multiple interventions, person refuses to acknowledge impact or change, community safety requires it. Document: specific pattern, interventions attempted, why they failed, decision process.

Public statement: For serious situations involving safety: warn network clearly, be specific about facts not speculation, protect those harmed (get consent before sharing their stories), share with related communities if appropriate.

NOT EVERYONE BELONGS HERE

Hard truth: not everyone is a good fit for every space. Doesn't make them bad people. Doesn't mean they can't thrive elsewhere. Means this particular network and this particular node don't work together.

Recognizing this early and acting on it with clarity prevents: years of routing overhead, good nodes leaving, network resources consumed by management, the person themselves being in a hostile environment.

Sometimes the kindest thing is clear boundaries: "This space isn't working for you or for us."

Prevention

NETWORK-LEVEL

Make early naming normal - discomfort before intolerable. Treat feelings as valid signals (dread before seeing someone, relief when they're absent - these are data). Practice Restorative Communication routinely not just in crisis. Distribute authority - rotate roles, cross-train, share knowledge, question monopolization. Act on patterns quickly - don't wait for perfect documentation, absolute certainty, complete consensus, or worse damage.

NODE-LEVEL

Trust your gut - you don't need to prove discomfort or get everyone else to feel the same. "I might be overreacting" is often a sign you're underreacting. Use Restorative Communication for minor conflicts before they grow. Document as you go (date, what happened, who was there, impact, your response) - not building a case, just noting patterns. Support others who name harm - believe them, ask what they need, don't make them prove it, don't leave them isolated.

SYSTEMIC

Build conflict resolution capacity across multiple people - don't rely on one or two "conflict people." Respect mediator expertise - if multiple mediators say "this person can't/won't change," believe them (see Anarchy_Paralysis). Create clear reporting pathways. Check in with people who leave (exit interviews reveal patterns). Review periodically for routing patterns. Teach pattern recognition - make this page required reading.

PREVENTIVE STRUCTURES

Regular community health check-ins beyond regular meetings. Onboarding that includes Restorative Communication basics, how to raise concerns, what to do if problems arise. Documentation systems that make it easy to record incidents, track patterns, see aggregate data. Clear decision processes defined ahead of time - who can make what decisions, how issues escalate, what evidence/process needed for actions, timeline expectations. Don't invent process during crisis.

References

• Original "Missing Stair" concept: Pervocracy 2012
• Network routing: John Gilmore
• Anarchy Paralysis - why communities fail to act on harm
• Restorative Communication - framework for addressing conflicts