Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: how tranparent should everything be?

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Oct 30, 2004, at 4:13 PM, Mary Anne Joyce wrote:

> Hi We are a forming cohousing  group and are beginning to have harder 
> discussions.  We want to be transparent but not ridiculous to 
> prospective members.  Some of us think there should be some 
> discussion, minute itemsthat are only available to people who are 
> members.  Others want everythng available to everybody on the 
> listserv.

I think this depends entirely on your group. We started with a list 
that was open because in the beginning you really don't know how is or 
is not a member and you need to be as inclusive as possible.

About the time we started getting serious about policies and unit 
choices and contracts, there was a request for a private list. At first 
this list was used just for sensitive information regarding money. I've 
forgotten the exact reason  but I think it was that the Finance Team 
did not feel comfortable sending out lists of who had submitted their 
mortgage approvals, etc., to the whole world. Then there was a personal 
issue that needed to be discussed about one member leaving the group 
and people were afraid that publishing their concerns to the world 
would be libelous, as well as unfair. We established a private list for 
any sensitive or money related issues.

Then when we moved in, the private list became much more used but not 
everyone was on it. Some only subscribed to the private list because 
they only wanted the "important" messages. We had essentially two lists 
with different memberships and confusion about which was for what. We 
also wanted very much to get everyone on email -- not everyone was and 
it was difficult to communicate. Communication does not get easier when 
you move in if you have a community of very busy people who are all on 
different schedules. Some are away on weekends, some are never home in 
the evening, some leave for a month at a time for foreign countries. 
Not everyone came to the commonhouse every day -- some once a week--to 
collect mail. One of our members once decided to consult each member of 
the community personally on a community related issue -- it took her 
two weeks to make face to face contact with everyone. Last month even 
that would have been impossible since 6 members were outside North 
America.

After we moved in we discovered that one of our member's old 
"boyfriend" was reading our email list. She was very frustrated by this 
and others were frightened that someone might be "watching" their 
private lives as well. We also have several therapists who do not want 
their patients reading the public list and did not even want their 
names mentioned on the public list -- a very hard situation to 
accommodate! We also have parents who do not want their children's 
names on a public list.

The extremes were a person who refused to be a part of any private list 
and one who wanted no email at all. Most of our members were happy with 
both lists but almost all wanted a private list for personal messages. 
It also became a safety issue since we needed to let each other know we 
would be out of town, the front door was open because the codes weren't 
working and no one had keys,

We ended up with a policy that says the only list members need to read 
to keep up with community business is the private list, tvc-members. 
All business posts go this list -- minutes, agendas, meeting notices -- 
as well as any personal messages that people do not want to send to the 
public list AND copies are supposed to be posted to the bulletin board. 
We add to this list anyone who is living in the community (renters, 
partners, etc.) and anyone who has an  interest in reading it for some 
reason. We ask for objections from the community before these people 
are added. Laird Schaub was on the list for several months before he 
came to do a workshop.

takomavillage [at] yahoogroups.com is a public list that anyone can join. 
Mostly we get jokes and questions about neighborhood issues there. Who 
has a car repair place. But we have a very active neighborhood list 
where much if that stuff goes.

Over the four years that we have been moved in, the private list has 
become the community bulletin board and the most used and hardly 
anything is posted to the bulletin boards that is of current interest 
except for meal sign ups. Bulletin boards mostly have stuff for 
reference, not current notices. One board in the front hall has a 
weekly calendar on a white board and emergency notices and proposals 
posted for consensus.

There are now two members not on our private list (for different 
reasons) so people copy them on messages they want them to see, but 
this means they only see a fraction of the messages posted and are not 
part of any dialogues that occur there. They get everything second 
hand. I find this frustrating but I want more communication and more 
sharing of information than most of our members do.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org