What's a plaza?

A plaza is your third space: not home, not work — the place your community gathers. Each plaza lives inside the directory as a space of its own, with a front page, its own pages, and its own people.

Think of the pickleball club, the birdwatching group, the neighbors who clean the beach every month, or a whole neighborhood's community. If it exists around the bay, it can have a plaza.

Its own pages — a front page that's always public, plus secondary pages that can be public, signed-in only, or members only.

Curated content — rich text blocks, images, and hand-picked selections of directory listings, events, articles, and other pages. The plaza decides what to spotlight.

Discussions — a conversation board with threads, nested replies, and reactions, moderated first by the plaza's own team.

Human-reviewed membership — plaza rules and join questions in the style of groups you already know; the team approves every request.

Messages — approved members of the same plaza can message each other directly on the site.

Every plaza has its own team: admins, moderators, and trusted posters. They approve members, review posts, and curate the pages.

House rules: nothing illegal, and the Four-Way Test — is it the truth? is it fair to all concerned? will it build goodwill and better friendships? will it be beneficial to all concerned? The site team backs up plaza teams as the second tier of admins and moderators.

The difference is the conversation. A plaza always includes a discussion space for its community. A pavilion is a multi-page presentation space — curated content, images, hand-picked selections — without a discussion board. A pavilion can become a plaza whenever its community is ready to talk.

Anyone can propose a plaza for a non-commercial topic — free. You write it up, submit it, and our team reviews it before it goes live.

Commercial plazas require a paid account. That keeps communities the heart of the site, while the businesses who want in help sustain it.