Common questions about matching, privacy, and safety.

An intentional community is a group of people who share a common way of living. That shared way of living might involve housing, land, meals, work, care, decision-making, faith, ecology, or simply being dependable neighbors. Every group chooses its own shape.

No. A commune is one form, usually involving unusually extensive sharing. Cohousing, housing cooperatives, ecovillages, urban coliving, multigenerational communities, and land-based groups may all organize very differently.

Not necessarily. Some groups form around a worldview; others form around housing, mutual aid, ecology, family life, affordability, or shared facilities. Common Ground compares how people say they want to live, not which identity label they use.

Most do not. Finances can remain private, partially shared, cooperatively owned, or extensively pooled. Property and exit terms should be understood in writing before commitment.

Yes. It can be an apartment cooperative, a cluster of nearby households, a shared urban property, or another arrangement. Community is defined by deliberate coordination, not remoteness.

No. Common Ground is a discovery and compatibility service for people looking to join, form, or recruit for intentional communities.

Yes. Anyone can view public community listings and profiles whose owners turned on public visibility.

An account lets you create and edit a profile, answer the questionnaire, receive personalized comparisons, send private contact notes, and manage a community listing.

No. Joining an existing community, finding people to form one, and representing a recruiting community are independent paths.

Yes. Your profile can indicate that you want to join, start, or remain open to both paths.

One. A profile is meant to represent one real person consistently across matching and contact.

An account can own and manage one community listing. This keeps responsibility for the listing clear and gives visitors one accountable point of contact.

No. Public visibility is a separate opt-in. Compatibility matching, the signed-in member directory, and the public directory are distinct choices.

Your chosen name, broad location, description, contribution skills, personal links, and any media you add. Questionnaire answers, shared-living experience, budget, shared-work limits, and choices marked Important are visible with your profile. Do not enter a precise residential address in public text.

No. Public browsing and private conversations never add your email address. You may choose to type contact details into a message, but Common Ground does not reveal them automatically.

Yes. Edit your profile at any time. Questionnaire answers are part of your profile and visible to anyone who can view it. You can leave a question unanswered and control the visibility of your whole profile in Profile → Visibility. Changed answers affect future results.

Yes. Edit your profile → Account settings includes a complete ZIP export with your structured records and available profile or cover images. It also offers an account-wide Site-data erasure preview before you type the exact confirmation. Erasure withdraws contact, removes owned content, and closes circles you facilitated rather than handing them to someone else. A small pseudonymized safety-case record may be kept for accountability, and the preview explains that before anything is erased.

No. Records labeled fictional demo or demo data exist so visitors can inspect the interface safely. Their images, biographies, evidence, and contact flows are examples, not real opportunities.

It is a weighted average of comparable answers, not a prediction of success. Question priorities give scored topics weights from 1 to 2; a must-have doubles its weight. Similar scale answers earn partial points. Flexible accepts the other choice. Cost and work limits use pass/fail checks. Animal and substance follow-ups share a domain weight so repeated detail is not counted several times. Exit freedom, boundaries, leadership checks, concern routes, and membership-removal safeguards are reviewed separately as member-protection standards and never add compatibility points. Missing or unclear answers are excluded. Open How this score is calculated in a comparison to inspect every contribution. Location, availability and skills do not add points.

It marks a choice you genuinely need. If the other side's answer conflicts, the match is marked incompatible instead of letting other similarities hide the problem.

Only if it conflicts with a choice marked Important. Ordinary differences affect the ranking and remain visible for discussion.

No. You can create a profile and start matching after the basic questions. Anything you skip stays unknown; it does not count as agreement or conflict. A result based on a few answers can change as more are shared. If none can be compared, no percentage is shown.

No. More about me and More about us are optional writing prompts, including questions you can add yourself. They help people understand your profile but never affect compatibility, Important requirements, or completion. Find them in Edit your profile → Finish, or as optional section 14 of the Community Profile questionnaire. Only answers with content appear on your profile. Mark a requirement Important in the matching questions if you want it included in the calculation.

Yes. People who want to form something new can compare their desired community structures using the same core questionnaire.

Yes. Self-reported skills can align with needs stated by a community. Skill fit is supplementary and does not erase conflicts involving safety, cost, power, or daily life.

No. Search and compatibility focus on practical needs and ways of living. Shared spiritual practice describes the role of practice in community life, not a requirement that someone possess a particular identity.

No. Matching uses structured, explainable rules. Results show scores, unmet needs, and topics to discuss. Full answers are visible with the profile; signed-in members with a profile can compare answers side by side.

No. It can help you decide whom to talk with. You still need to check honesty, power, legal terms, real behavior, and how people handle conflict.

Yes. People can lie online. Read documents, ask for references, talk more than once, visit carefully, and try small steps you can leave before making a major commitment.

Open the full profile or listing and send a private note. Sign-in and a personal profile are required for real contact requests.

They see your profile and the first message you sent. They can accept, decline, mute, or report the request. Your email and other private contact details are not included.

Common Ground does not reveal email addresses when a message request is accepted. Acceptance opens the in-site conversation. Either person may intentionally share contact details in a message.

A decline closes the request, and ignoring it does not open messaging. Treat a decline as a complete answer; repeated contact attempts can be reported.

Yes, while it is still pending. Once contact has been exchanged, withdrawing cannot make information already seen private again.

Signed-in members can block accounts and report suspected harassment, discrimination, spam, misrepresentation, or safety concerns. A report asks for a review; it does not prove wrongdoing by itself. Moderators document actions, and affected members can submit a correction or appeal without seeing the reporter's private account.

No. A community may optionally link a public Discord invitation for informal conversation, events, and culture. Discord is an external service with separate accounts and moderation; it does not verify a listing, replace Common Ground's mutual-contact process, or become part of compatibility scoring.

No. Identity verification and background-check services are not currently built into the product. Treat personal claims as unconfirmed until checked independently.

It describes a limited review of specific evidence supplied at a particular time. The dated evidence ledger shows each claim, source, review scope, expiry, and current status so you can see exactly what was and was not checked. It is never a blanket safety badge or a guarantee of solvency, legality, honesty, or future conduct.

No. If a background check is appropriate and lawful, the parties must arrange it transparently and with consent. A clean report would still not establish compatibility or good character.

Governance documents, ownership or lease authority, budgets and obligations, membership and exit terms, current-member references, dispute procedures, insurance where relevant, and proof that advertised practices happen.

Secrecy, leader immunity, rushed commitment, punishment for outside relationships, undocumented money, sleep or food control, surrender of documents, costly or unsafe exit, and treating disagreement as moral defect.

Meet publicly first, tell an independent person your plan, preserve your own transport and documents, avoid isolation, and do not let social pressure accelerate the commitment.

Only after identities, authority, written terms, debts, refund or equity rules, and exit consequences have been independently reviewed. Large irreversible commitments deserve professional legal and financial advice.

No. Reports require review and can be mistaken or malicious. Multiple independent, specific, and well-supported reports carry more weight than one vague allegation.

Someone with legitimate authority should own the profile and keep its information current. Do not list a property or group without permission.

Current availability, housing conditions, cost, labor, decision rules, leadership limits, finances, exit terms, conflict procedures, daily practices, desired skills, and clear evidence of what presently exists.

Yes, as long as you clearly call them plans. Keep what exists today separate from what the founders hope to build later.

Mark it currently full. Accurate status protects seekers from wasted effort and preserves trust. It can be changed when openings return.

After a community profile is created, its owner can publish online events, in-person visits, or open houses from Community Profile. Each event can have a capacity, RSVP deadline, reminder timing, broad public location, and private joining details for confirmed attendees. Full events use a first-in waitlist. Organizers can edit, pause, or cancel an event; affected people see changes in Alerts and My events, and a larger capacity promotes waiting guests in order.

Whenever a material fact changes and periodically even when it does not. Stale or incomplete records can be demoted or excluded from default matching.

No. The product principle is that payment may support useful recruiting tools or visibility, but must never alter compatibility scores or hide conflicts.

The current prototype is free. Future paid tools may be offered to communities or members, but browsing and score integrity should not depend on paying.

Yes. A person or community can add a photo collage or one short video, and a community profile owner can upload supporting documents with a plain-language description of each file. Collage photos are resized and re-encoded in the browser to remove embedded camera metadata. Video files are stored as uploaded and may retain metadata, so review them before sharing. Media follows the profile's visibility and can be removed at any time.

Not yet. Common Ground has in-app alerts for contact activity, circle invitations, moderation updates, event reminders, discovery updates, and listing-freshness reminders. They update while you use the Site. Reliable email, push delivery, and background delivery while the Site is closed still need an external notification provider.

No. When both sides separately allow private location matching, the match uses straight-line miles between their saved coordinates and explains that method in the result. Otherwise it falls back to the written city or region. A public map marker is a separate choice and is rounded. None of these methods estimates roads, drive time, or transit.

Named saved searches are not available. Profile lets you opt into new-community or new-person alerts, choose immediate, daily, or weekly checks, and pause either alert. Checks run when you open Alerts; Common Ground does not monitor in the background or send email or push notifications while the Site is closed. Your directory filters stay on your device and return when you revisit.

No. Outcome records and safety reports are separate from public ratings. Any future review system would need protections against retaliation, gaming, and unsupported accusations.

No. Common Ground is still an early-stage service. It now supports explainable matching, consent-based distance checks, evidence records, case review, data export and erasure, and reversible next-step planning. A broader launch still needs formal legal and accessibility review, reliable email or push delivery, independent geocoding, identity checks chosen with care, and staffed support procedures.