Cohousing-L Mailing List: Rocky Corner Cohousing Communications

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

Rocky Corner Cohousing has a wonderful practice that I’ve not been aware that 
other communities follow. Instead of sending business meeting minutes to just 
their committed members, they send them to their whole mailing list. This is 
incredibly inclusive and informative. 

It allows all those lurkers to understand the community and to trust it so they 
feel more comfortable joining. People will lurk for a long time before stepping 
in to get more active. Partly because their lives are too busy to take on an 
iffy project and partly because collaborative housing is something they have 
never considered. It takes time to get the drift of it.

The fear that people will just lurk and not join if they have access to 
information without joining, I think is an unfounded fear. No controlled 
studies on this but I can’t imagine that any one would join a community just to 
get another set of minutes in their inbox. 

Exclusive communications don’t create inclusive communities.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Sociocracy: A Deeper Democracy
http://www.sociocracy.info