Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: guidlines on consensus acceptance of new members

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Nov 28, 2006, at 9:37 PM, Tree Bressen wrote:
>

> Almost all groups created on the cohousing model use
> self-selection.  Coming from the earlier intentional communities 
> movement
> where a lot of emphasis is placed on screening incoming members

On the topic of screening members:

I have long wanted to participate in a list for intentional communities 
that would reflect the breadth of community, rather than a narrow list 
like Cohousing-L. Cohousing-L is such a wonderful resource with open 
sharing people, wouldn't it be great to have an email list open to all 
intentional communities so they could share. So when a list was 
announced in the last Fellowship for Intentional Communities 
newsletter, I immediately joined.

The rules for participation on the list tell the story about why there 
are so few intentional communities and no list on which they share 
information. The rules grew and grew over the first month so that I 
finally sent a message that I knew would get me evicted. The list of 
rules:

Memberships are only approved after a member sends an introduction to 
the list saying that they are indeed serious about starting a 
community.

This rule quickly morphed into _everyone_ on the list voting on each 
new list members.

If you didn't vote on the new member, you were in violation of the 
rules.

Every member has to post at least once a week or you would be deleted. 
The moderators deleted very quickly (like less than a month?) the 
people who had posted introductions but had not posted after that.

Lurkers were not allowed because lurkers are hangers-on who take 
without giving.

After cohousing, it was a very strange set of rules. And, of course, I 
said so, and am no more on the list. But I thought this might present a 
good comparison of the different mind-set of cohousers compared to 
other intentional communities.

I also join lists of forming communities of all kinds and am struck 
that those who are interested in ecovillages, go very quickly to 
teaching or demonstration farming or land conservation projects of 
various kinds rather than thinking of getting homes built first.

Very interesting world out there.

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