Cohousing-L Mailing List: re: advertising

[Pablo Halpern (phalpern]

> From: awh [at] cc.bellcore.com (horner,andrew w)
> 
> Rob has put his finger on a grey area in my thesis. I, too, am no expert o
> net etiquette, but I think if we talk this out, we can come to an appropri
> consensus for this list.

Andrew took the words right out of my keyboard.  We are a virtual community, 
perhaps we could come to a virtual consensus! Every listserv list and usenet 
newsgroup eventually has an ad posted to it and it always sparks a debate 
about what is and is not appropriate. This debate usually distracts us from 
our primary purpose for reading the list or newsgroup (e.g. to talk about 
cohousing). We have talked about the abstractions enough.  Lets put out some 
guidelines and then trust people on the list to use good judgement.  If we 
can keep them simple, the guidelines could be added to the introductory info 
that is sent by the listserver to each new subscriber.

>From Andrew's post and others, I see a possible consensus emerging and would 
like to take a shot at a few guidelines (everybody, please add to this):

GENERAL PRINCIPLE (feedback, please):

There is a difference between solicited and unsolicited advertising.  By the 
nature of this group, we solicit information about cohousing, some of which 
may have a comercial component.  Well presented solicited ads are okay.  
Unsolicited ads will be met with scorn.  We will trust the members of this 
list to use good judgement when posting.  For this reason, people are 
strongly encouraged to wait until they have a good sense of the cohousing-l 
discussion before posting anything that might be construed as an 
advertisement.

SPECIFIC GUIDELINES

1. Any anouncement of meetings, conferences, etc., whether free or not for a 
topic related to cohousing, intentional communities, architecture, housing 
in general, etc. is okay.

2. Anouncements of cohousing units for sale, groups looking for members, 
members looking for groups, groups looking for land, etc. are encouraged.

3. An anouncement offering real estate, products or services is okay if the 
sender states his/her association with the company making the offer and a 
statement of why he/she believes it is relevent to the discussion (if not 
obvious). If the sender is involved for financial gain, the ad should be 
kept short and informal. Examples: "I don't know much about this, but I 
thought others might be interested..." or "Our group used these consultants 
and found them to be moderately helpful.  If you want to reach them, 
call..." or "P.S., I'm offering a booklet for $20 that contains..."

- Pablo

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Pablo Halpern              (508) 435-5274         phalpern [at] world.std.com

New View Neighborhood Development, Acton, MA
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