Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Cohousing-L tailing off

[Stuart Staniford-Chen (stanifor]

Fred wrote:
> seems to be of interest based on the number of replies.  Maybe we are
> wondering if it portends something about the long term viability of
> cohousing-L or even popularity of cohousing generally. Here in Minnesota
> many of us sense that we are (uniquely ?) experiencing a decline in

Well, this has been an interesting conversation.  After studying Fred's  
more precise graph and explanations of down-times, it now seems to me  
that the *reduction* in cohousing-L traffic is probably explained  
overwhelmingly by a technical factor: the switch to having "reply to  
sender" as default, instead of "reply to list".  I think this can make a  
significant difference in the number of replies that happen privately.   
Since every extra reply that used to go to the list had some probability  
to spawn additional replies, the overall size of each thread is quite  
sensitive to this.

However, it certainly seems unlikely that the underlying interest in  
cohousing has continued to grow exponentially - it must have leveled off.  
 That's consistent with what I see happening with groups in Northern  
California.

Stuart.