Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: nextdoor.com?

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Jan 5, 2016, at 3:00 AM, David Mandel <dlmandel [at] gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I advise being wary about nextdoor.com. For one thing, know it's a
> for-profit social media site.

I haven’t joined or participated in NextDoor. When it started I was 
aggressively solicited with emails and phone calls to join. The phone calls in 
particular were not clearly forthcoming about what they were calling about. 
Over a few weeks, it became clear that they wanted me in particular because I 
moderate our neighborhood list of almost 3,000 members. The focus of our list, 
TakomaDC, is Takoma Park DC but obviously it includes all the surrounding 
neighborhoods as well as DC government officials. And people who have moved 
away but want to keep in touch.

The NextDoor selling pitch was that the neighborhoods are clearly defined and 
only the people who actually live on the block(s) are allowed to join. (I don’t 
know who vets this.) That is the reason most of our list members were not 
interested. They didn’t like the exclusivity. I think a few may have joined but 
we rarely hear about it and I didn’t know they were still functioning.

One great feature of our neighborhood list is information. Information comes 
from many sources. The oddest question gets an answer—like why does snow have 
an acoustic effect or what present could I give to a 93 year old de-capacitated 
mother in a nursing home. Or where can I get Mexican spices “right now” for 
visitors from New Mexico who are going crazy with our food. Or at 3:00am, why 
are the helicopters still circling after an hour and who do I call about it?

So limiting membership would be self-defeating. We do limit commercial 
messages, class schedule announcements, and press releases. Except for 
government announcements, all messages are “neighbor to neighbor” and 
conversational in tone. New businesses in the immediate neighborhood are 
encouraged to post for about 6 months so we can support them and remember they 
now exist. And neighbors can always recommend a business or service. 
(Recommendations work better than announcements anyway.)

I go on about this because I really believe in email lists and encourage people 
to start them. It can take awhile to build. Except for a work list, like a 
team, or a crisis list like a crime spree, it takes about 200 members to keep a 
conversation going. Many people lurk but actively read — I know because they 
tell me so. “I don’t ever post but I always read.” “I haven’t posted in the 
years I’ve been on the list but finally there is a question I can answer.”

Email lists are asynchronous, immediate, and spontaneous in a way that nothing 
else is. I consult forums when I need software support but otherwise find them 
too controlled to be of interest. And you have to go to them to get messages. I 
find that email lists die when replies go to sender as well. Having replies to 
the list means some private messages are posted but the trade off is that 
everyone is party to the conversation. 

I would encourage open lists for the neighborhood, loosely defined, and for the 
cohousing community to connect to the neighborhood. Therapists, for example, 
don’t want to be public, but this isn’t a reason not to have a public list for 
everyone who wants to join. But it must be useful and well moderated.

If you are curious, you can join to see what the list is — it has cycles, 
however, so a snapshot may not be representative.

List Mum
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Where Everyone Trims Their Tails,
Smothers Flames, Ignores Trolls, and
Never Sends Private Messages to the List.