Talk:Not cohousing

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Objection to a Misquote and Plagiarism made by Craig Ragland here: http://wiki.ic.org/wiki/Not_cohousing

In the "Not Cohousing" article by Craig Ragland the author misquotes a statement of mine to which I object. My original statement was:

"... In any general discussion about intentional community cohousing increasingly takes center stage, to the point that the term “cohousing” is becoming to the communities movement much as “Kleenex” is to tissues and “Xerox” is to photocopies. ..."

This is from the paper titled:

Intentional Family: The Next-Generation Cohousing A. Allen Butcher, Denver, Colorado, Fourth Draft, May 31, 2007

Craig's comment is:

"... it was suggested, by Allen Butcher, that cohousing may in the process of becoming a genericized trademark for Intentional Communities - the Xerox (tm) of intentional communities - that is, a specific name that becomes descriptive of a broader class (photo copiers in the case of Xerox)... Allen actually used a less flattering example, ..."

Craig's comment does two things to which I object. First, he states that I used a "less flattering example" when in fact I used the Xerox example myself, even though the way Craig writes his article it reads as though that was his idea (this is plagiarism), while he states that my example was "less flattering." The way this is written the reader is left with the impression that I said something that denigrates cohousing when in fact I did not. Craig left it up to the reader's imagination as to what I wrote that is "less flattering" of cohousing.

Second, the way that Craig wrote his article he is stating that my writing that “'cohousing' is becoming to the communities movement much as 'Kleenex' is to tissues and 'Xerox' is to photocopies" is demeaning of cohousing.

I submit that such a comparison in no way what-so-ever casts any dispersions upon, nor does it denigrate, cohousing. I merely gave examples of two common eponyms, which in these cases are proprietary names that came into common use to represent all forms of the item in question. "CoHousing" was at first a proprietary name. Craig, however, chooses to make a value statement, that referring to photocopies (written in a way that suggests that it was his idea) is preferable to the reference to tissues (written as my "less flattering" statement).

This would not be a problem except that Craig uses this peculiar preference in a way that suggests that I have spoken disparagingly with regard to cohousing. When I first responded to Craig about this his comment to me was, "I'm surprised that you are sensitive to this issue." My surprise is that Craig would be sensitive to something that does not exist at all. I said nothing that could logically be considered to be "less flattering," and I believe that my objection to his statement is well founded, as I state above.

Craig also suggested that if I didn't like what he wrote that I could delete his words. This is not an acceptable remedy to me. I disagree with anyone deleting someone else's words, for two reasons, first, because people should not have to clean up errors made by others, and second, because the charge could then be made that one person censored another's writing.

Lest it be charged that my objection is a form of censorship, I shall state that I view it as a request for a correction of an error on Craig's part that results in a misquote that suggests that I have disparaged cohousing, for one thing, and second, that reads as though the comparison with Xerox copies was his idea.

I asked Craig by email what he was thinking when he wrote that material and he did not respond. My guess is that he quoted me based on his memory of my article, without checking the original document. Is memory must have been incomplete as he evidently could remember the Xerox reference but only had a sense that the first reference I made was some how derogatory while it wasn't at all. Perhaps he was thinking that my reference was to toilet paper and not to facial tissues. I submit that "Kleenex" is not a dirty word.

As a minimal remedy I added the following text, "specifically, "as 'Kleenex' is to tissues." This is to at least remove the requirement that Craig left that the reader must guess what I actually wrote. However, this does not resolve either of my two objections, stated above, while it results in the reader questioning the author's intended meaning. My request is that the original author show that he recognizes his error by making the correction.

I respectfully request that the misquote and plagiarism on the ICWiki webpage as I explain above be corrected. Allen