Cohousing-L Mailing List: Defaults [Was _Participation and Compensation Issues]

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On 8/2/03 11:56 AM, "Sharon Villines" <sharon [at] sharonvillines.us> wrote:

> You have to have a default if you want things to happen.

I'm responding to my own message here but I wanted to add that this helped
enormously during our design phase. We had a member who was employed by our
developer whose job it was to send emails asking for people's preferences on
things. She would email and email and email and then send private emails and
then call people who had not responded. In most cases people didn't even
care about the decision but she couldn't know this unless she talked to
them.

When she stated her requests differently -- including a default -- it took
much less time to make decisions.

Old format: Please let me know by [date] if you want the warm or cool color
option for your kitchen.

New format: Most people have indicated the warm color option for kitchens.
Unless I hear from you by [date] that you want the cool color option, all
kitchen will have the warm color option.

That put the ball in the responder's court, not hers. Saved tons of time.

Sharon
-- 
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org

_______________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list
Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe  and other info:
http://www.cohousing.org/cohousing-L