Cohousing-L Mailing List: Cohousing-L now has 300 subscribers/ Fred's comments

[E. C. Brackett (brack006]

Cohousing-L now has 300 subscribers - somewhat of a milestone.

I have not made any efforts to promote the list for some time now
but word has gotten out and we keep getting new subs tho I dont
have a very good feel for where new subscribers are hearing about 
the list.  We also have a fair number of people who unsubscribe
tho we consistantly have net growth.

At least one opportunity to publicize the list that might result
in significant numbers of new subs has so far been not pursued.
Cohousing-L is active enough is some (most?) ways tho at the same time 
it would be nice to have more people with significant cohousing 
connections (e.g. communities not currently represented here)
on the list.  One idea that came up at the brunch was to have a 
seperate cohousing list for people new to cohousing.  This might 
address Judy's concern a while back that Cohousing-L tends to be dominated 
by discussion of dealing with the challenges of (ok, problems)
in developing cohousing which coud give newcommers an less than
accurate impression of how great cohousing can be.


New subscribers are encouraged to send me private email about 
how they found us or other comments.  Such feedback could be helpful.
Folks who are about to unsub are encouraged to write if they have 
comments as well.

BTW if you email me with a request for assistance of some sort,
normally I try to respond within a day or so.  If you dont get
a response within a few days, assume it got lost in the shuffle
and send another request.  I suspect a few things do slip by me. **

Also now that school is starting at the U of MN 
the net infrastructure is really groaning with overload
which may cause some delays (my account's really at UMN).
Much mail arrives hours late depending on the time of day it arrives
relative to peak use times, I'm getting numerous timeouts connecting 
to the mailserver to send mail etc.  Hopefully things will improve
with time and as I learn to shift my use to off-peak times --
students dont get up and active til mid morning....
I have some alternate accounts to help get by.

BTW I am back from vacation and should be caught up
by Friday (9/30) ; start counting then...


** THE LAMENTABLE DETAILS -- permission to ignore granted
I'm afraid I treat my email a bit in the "shopping spree" mode a
bit.  In the shopping spree you get a finite period of time to 
pick out whatever you can from the store for free.  You cant 
possibly be a careful shopper but you do your best.  I can't
read let alone respond to everything that comes thru my mailbox
but I do my best.  

   Actually a better analogy that's hard to describe
because of its dreamlike or video game like quality is:
There's a stream of desireable objects floating past at a brisk pace.
I try to grab each and respond appropriate to its nature.
Inevitably they dont all get the response they should and some are set 
aside after initial response awaiting further action only to be 
never seen again.

My priorities are set to respond to *all* sysop related duties but 
I fear that I may overlook one now and then.


Fred