Cohousing-L Mailing List: Email / Spam / Lists / orgs

[Fred H Olson (fholson]

The recent flurry of replies that started with Craig's
message:  "On sending Cohousing-related permission-based emails"
just came to my attention. ( I only read messages via the archives.)
I don't want to get verbose but feel I should comment. (ps.. but
I did, sorry)

I understood Craig's original message to refer to people who "harvest"
addresses from the Coho/US website / directory or people who have posted
to cohousing-L (latter would take some manual editing or programming) and
sending mass mailing to these addresses.  I recall getting mail like this
in the past tho not recently.  I agree with this sentiment.

Anyone can start their own list but they need to get the permission of the
people before putting addresses on the list and sending mass mail to
"the list".  Cohousing-L does this via the web forms and email
confirmation; the Cohousing-L subscriber list is never released.

Aside: In the early days of cohousing-L, we did not have the confirmation
 process and someone persisted in subscribing eastern European addresses
 repeatedly for months. I dropped them without notice. I had not thought
 about that in a while; we have come a long ways. Occasionally I made
 mistakes (Sorry Joe in the SW)

Craig I do suggest the database have a prominent link:
 "DO NOT SPAM COMMUNITIES IN THIS DIRECTORY"
that goes to a statement something like:

 This directory contains email addresses for many of the communities
 for the convenience of people pursuing cohousing. However collecting
 many adresses from this directory and sending email to them would
 constitute SPAM. Don't do it. Consider communicating via
 Coho/US advertising or Cohousing-L.

I thought the ic.org parts of the directory "obscured" addresses
but I was able to copy and paste my own from it.  BTW addresses in the
cohousing-L archives are "obscured" in a couple different ways - try
copy and pasting them :)

I hate privacy statements and terms of use and such; they are so dense and
verbose. So I guess I avoid reading them.  I had not read Coho/us's..
Craig wrote in the privacy statement and quoted in his latest message:

 In particular, our website also offers the Cohousing List-serve. Please
 be advised that information posted on the Cohousing List-serve immediately
 becomes public knowledge and is sometimes automatically collected by
 other parties for their own purposes.

That first statement muddles the independant relationship that cohousing-L
DOES have with Coho/US.  I am unaware of any documented instances of
automatic collection of addresses from the current cohousing-L archives
that overcomes the "obscured" features.  (It would be possible but
hopefully unlikely.)

For the record on three pages
( http://lists.cohousing.org/mailman/listinfo/cohousing-l
 http://l.cohousing.org/c-l-hist.htm
 http://l.cohousing.org/c-l-faq.htm )
I state something like:
 Cohousing-L is independent of but cooperates
 closely with The Cohousing Association of the United States (Coho/US)

I guess I figured it was obvious but that cooperation does not include
any editorial policy (there is very little editorial policy, it's mostly
an honor system tho I have set guidelines and written to folks who've
breached what I thought was reasonable.)

"Ads" for cohousing units, communities, rentals etc are
welcome on cohousing-L within some commonsense guidelines
See http://l.cohousing.org/c-l-faq.htm

Fred, listserv manager, http://justcomm.org
 Who's been playing with webcams (and google maps/satelite images) lately
 See latest blog entry.  Have not used google maps sat images on cohousing
 communities but that could be interesting.

PS a few lines of off-topic comments are acceptable by the signature of
otherwise on topic cohousing-L messages.

--
Fred H. Olson  Minneapolis,MN 55411  USA        (near north Mpls)
Communications for Justice -- Free, superior listserv's w/o ads:
http://justcomm.org      My Link Pg: http://fholson.cohousing.org
612-588-9532 (7am-10pm CST/CDT)   Email: fholson at cohousing.org