Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Request from Manzanita Village in Arizona: How does your community handle members who abuse the community e-mail?

[Muriel Kranowski (murielk]

We also have a Listserv Membership and Use Policy, and the two of us on the
relevant subcommittee are also dissatisfied with it. We're waiting for
plenary consensus on a more general process for handling problems related
to people not following our agreements before proposing a change.

Our current policy lists examples of acceptable and unacceptable listserv
behaviors and then (unfortunately from my perspective) makes the overseeing
subcommittee the deciders of how to handle complaints. We think it should
not be up to the two of us, who are more techies than interpersonal
conflict experts, to make such determinations. So, bottom line, don't do it
like that.

On Thu, Jan 14, 2021 at 9:46 PM Tom @ Gather <tom [at] gather.coop> wrote:

> >
> > Greetings co-housing friends:  We are looking for solutions to our issue
> > of about 4 of our 60 plus members occasionally abusing the community
> group
> > e-mail by "calling out" by name in
> > disrespectful or even abusive posts other members they are upset
> with/have
> > an issue with.  This issue has been raised, commented on, lamented, etc.
> > but still people do this.
> > Have you found a way to solve a similar issue in your community?
> >
>
> Do you have any community agreements or policies about email use? If not,
> perhaps time to draft one! I'd share ours from Touchstone but it's not
> particularly good and we're working on refining it. I'd recommend having
> clear agreements about what constitutes appropriate email discourse (and
> what does not), and then having an option to issue warnings and temporarily
> disable posting privileges for repeat violators. The latter shouldn't be
> needed if the former is clear and consented to by the group but it's good
> to have just in case. Another thing you can do in the policy is to
> designate a team of moderators who have some experience or basic training
> in de-escalating and applying the policy. A team is important since it
> means you have a better chance of having someone available to head off a
> harmful discussion quickly before it spirals out of control. Especially in
> the beginning when your community is adjusting to the new agreements.
>
> Good luck!
>
> --
> Tom for the Gather Team
> https://info.gather.coop
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