Cohousing-L Mailing List: What is a cohousing community?

[Stuart Staniford-Chen (stanifor]

This problem is becoming worse and worse so I'm now seeking input from  
cohousing-l.  Over the years, we have had many philosophical discussions  
here over "what is cohousing".  This problem now presents itself to me in  
a very concrete form.

I run the Cohousing Network WWW pages.  One of those pages is a list of  
links to the web pages of individual cohousing communities.  From time to  
time, people contact me and say - "Could you please create a link/page  
for XYZ community".

The problem is that in a small proportion of the cases, XYZ is *not*  
what most of us would recognize as cohousing.  So far I have dealt with  
this on a case-by-case basis, preferring to let whoever was contacting me  
make the call.  All I have done is to make sure they did have a  
reasonable awareness of what the definition of cohousing is by emailing  
them such a definition and asking that they check that they fit it.

Obviously, different people will interpret different forms of words  
differently, and most communities have an incentive to get the extra  
link/help/whatever.  Some cases have approached me that are very grey  
IMO.  Not that the people/communities aren't fine and worthwhile, but  
they are something different from Cohousing.

What should I do?

Stuart.