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

[Elizabeth Stevenson (lilbert]

>From: Catherine Harper <tylik [at] eskimo.com>
>To: Multiple recipients of list <cohousing-l [at] freedom2.mtn.org>
>Subject: Re: using email and forums for discussion between meetings
>Date: Sun, Jul 9, 2000, 7:13 PM
>

> 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.
Well said.

The case may be that those of us who got together before email (gosh that
makes me an old timer, huh?) are, as groups, less likely to use it
comfortably than the groups that formed more recently, in spite of the fact
that we use it extensively in other parts of our lives. We have evolved
differently.
--
Liz Stevenson
Southside Park Cohousing
Sacramento, California