Cohousing-L Mailing List: Cohousing Website ideas.

[Rob Sandelin (Exchange) (Robsan]

Stuart has done a great job putting together a first class web site for
cohousing.  Personally my opinion is to let Stuart choose who he wants
to link to, and maybe ad a link to the  web pages with the title, Other
intentional communities. One of the reasons I was told that the word
Cohousing was originally trademarked by Katie and Chuck was that they
did not want generic condos and other such projects to use the word.
(The trademark was removed in 1993). I fully support letting Stuart
being the supreme ruler and abitrator of all use of the web site, since
he does all the work involved.

The Fellowship for intentional communities runs a web site, which among
many other things, includes listings for communties web addresses.
(They also have a reach page, where people who are looking for community
can place an ad, and communities with spaces can advertise).

Both the cohousing site and the FIC site cross connect each other and
when in doubt, let the FIC site handle it.  Whereas listing an
occaisional community that is not really cohousing is not going to have
to terrible an impact, certainly the goal is that these sites represent
cohousing, a specific form of intentional community. This offers a
simpified way for seachers to find this specific information.

One project I would love to see happen someday is for all the groups
that have reached the stage where they have control of a site to have
some sort of web page, even if its just a generic form that is filled
out via telephone interview and then turned into a web page. I would set
the bar at site control, because that is really what separates cohousing
reality from want a be's. I would not exclude those who have a site and
want to link to it, but I would not be willing to create a web site for
them, whereas I would be willing to create a minimum site for the other
groups.  I would certainly love to see all groups that are built have a
web presence as well, If only with the data of location, number of
units, commonhouse dimensions, etc.  The cohousing magazine runs just
such a blurb once a year or so, listing all the completed projects,
projects under construction, etc.  Turn this into web pages?????

Rob Sandelin
Northwest Intentional Communties Association