Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: using email and forums for discussion between meetings

[Catherine Harper (tylik]

On Sun, 9 Jul 2000, Elizabeth Stevenson wrote:

> As useful as a list like this can be, I still feel strongly that most issues
> require face to face meetings. It is very easy to misinterpret people's
> meaning in writing. Also, you mentioned differing comfort levels. That makes
> the playing field inherently unequal. 

One thing I appreciated about Matt's post was that he recognised that face
to face communications are also inherently unequal.  

I'm a geek.  The group of us who are slowly moving towards maybe putting
together an interntional community are also mostly geeks to one degree or
another.  When it comes to organization and planning stuff this group
tends to run on email -- I'm not saying that we don't spend a lot of face
to face time together, but that doesn't tend to be our best organizational
mode.  As a group we tend to be less likely to have a lot of the problems
that are often attributed to email -- the misreading of people's meanings,
that sort of thing -- because it is enough of a primary communication
method that a lot of coping strategies have developed.  (What's funy is
the extent to which the same patterns of speech carry over into face to
face conversation.

The other side of the equation is that a large number of people aren't
nearly as comfortable verbally.  I am highly verbal, think on my feet
well, and tend to be very good at presenting my arguements verbally.  I'm
not alone, by any means, but those of us who are tend to really dominate
over those of us who aren't in face to face conversation.  My husband, on
the other hand, is quiet, and likes to think things through very carefully
before presenting his thoughts, and in general conversation the topic
often turns before he really gets a word in.  In email, however, he is
incredible cogent, and it is a medium that really allow him to use his
strengths.

I don't think there is a single answer for all groups, and I think the
ways people in the group use email and their comfort levels are probably
the largest consideration.  I suspect a lot of the cautionary tales apply
best to groups where the majority of members are familiar with email but
do not use it as a primary form of social communication.  I imagine there
are a lot of groups out there still that have members who don't like the
medium at all, where email would be necessarily exclusive.  And then you
have the nerds I run with, where someone new entering the social group who
is broke and computerless will be given a machine (and have access
arranged for them) because it is simply unthinkable for them to be cut
off. 

                                Catherine