It was announced yesterday that CouchSurfing is seeking to hire a full time developer. They’ve just hired two core volunteers (Jim Stone and Mattthew Brauer). Where are they getting all this cash from? If they’re each paid $2’000 USD a month, between those three and Casey, that makes $96’000 a year.
So the CouchSurfing Corporation is finally starting to pay off…
It shouldn’t matter how much any employee is making. If they get very wealthy who really cares. As long as the website runs and they keep improving the site. Background business issues mean little to the Community.
Couchsurfing.com cannot any longer exist off mostly motivated volunteers with little or no professional experience. It is unfair to expect people to live off air and personal resources in a full time or substantial manner. Even Casey himself may one day need to seed his position to a veteran website community executive with Non-Profit Organization (NPO) experience.
For the meantime, one should be pleased that CS is at least paying someone. I believe all the Admins\Primary contibutors should be paid at least something for their responsibilities and their efforts.
In a short year, CS has grown to a great framework of capability, membership and talent. It will take time for all these, together with new teamwork to fine tune and evolve the Project.
We should all be pleased with the results so far, and continue to push for more.
@uaflyer: I think you underestimate the excellent volunteers who have been working on CouchSurfing so far. Many of them have a great deal of professional experience and are experts in their field. Joe Edelman, Morgan Tocker, Kasper Souren, these names come to mind as expert professionals.
I agree with the idea of paying everyone. I think it would be much better to take the $8’000 monthly budget and split it amongst a much wider pool of volunteers. Giving say 16 people $500 a month, or 32 people $250 a month.
Currently, CouchSurfing does not meet 501c3 status requirements. Casey gives jobs to his friends, all the core team are white, male, north Americans. I’m very disappointed with the results so far.
$2,000 a month is a fraction of what most of these guy could make in the corporate world.
A lot of the talented people who work for CS could easily be pulling in $80,000 to $100,000 in salary but instead work for a cause they believe in for a mere $24,000 a year.
As for the core team being white, male & Americans – well most computer programmers will be male, CS started with an American so it’s kind of natural that a lot of the team will be from the USA, not everyone is white – Weston for example is from Mexico.
Agreed 24K is a small amount salary – but how much do the free tickets, free food, free rent, free computers and whatever other perks (like free tickets, food and lodging for your girlfriends) add up to?
Let’s say another 24K.. but they aren’t paying taxes on the 2nd 24K. And even if that is a bit lower than what they could make as a regular programmer, they have presumably massive amounts of free time – some it it basically paid vacation time (difference between when house in Alaska is rented, and when the collective starts) and a lot more spent in glamorous beautiful vacations – i think this all adds up to a pretty decent work package, that many people – MANY programmers- would be thrilled to get.
So, as long as we include ‘all they are getting’ rather than just absolute salary, i think what they are getting is pretty commensurate with what others of similar abilities would happily receive.
Personally, i don’t see any reason for people NOT to get salaries and support commensurate with what they would be paid more generally in the workforce. My main issue is that 1. that should be stated, that it is their policy; 2. all the perks and non-financial support shoudld be disclosed (and probably must be, under the laws governing 501c3′s; 3. other ways that CS founders are making money off of CS should be disclosed 4. if CS is operating in this way, then the basis for choosing people for the collectives and for salaried positions should be open and transparent. If they have to put ‘shared vibe with other group participants’ as a requirement, that might solve some of their issues, and would at least be transparent.
Really, just claim what you’re doing, be open about it, it will be better from a legal sense and not endangering the nonprofit aspect, and will calm a lot of people who are forced to think in terms of conspiracy theory and misuse of funds.
*just be straight and communicate!*
“…and will calm a lot of people who are forced to think in terms of conspiracy theory and misuse of funds” is pretty naive, valeri, considering the history of OCS. anything that’s said is flagged by you guys as smoke and PR mind games. no one here is willing to give CS the benefit of any doubt even though it’s always been run the same way by the same people that brought you the website in the first place. the same website that keeps people like you logging in so frequently. complain and complain but keep coming back for more. really, “be welcome” to go elsewhere if you don’t like what they are doing. as long as significantly more people enjoy it than hate on it they’ll obviously are going to keep doing it anyway.
Where is the comment I replied with? OCS is deleting comments again. It’s SO hypocritical to preach about openness, anti-censorship, and transparency when you can’t even do it with your little website, fakers.
maybe a bug?
or did your comment contain links?
was your comment promoting viagra?
what was your comment about?
find a possible explanation about the deleted posts on the mailing list
Hum hey,
I checked through a couple of pages of our spam queue and found joe k’s comment over there – you should be able to see it above now. Comment by nick hobomundas was also rescued, not sure which thread it ended up in.
The overwhelming majority of comments in the spam queue were actual spam, so conspiracy theories might be an overstatement at this time at least
for the future, in case your comment doesn’t show up feel free to reach out to the site admins (me, Thomas, Callum) personally or through the opencs mailinlist.
Cheers
This isn’t the first time I’ve had posts deleted. No they didn’t contain links for promote viagra, but they did promote fairness and wasn’t full of anti-cs sentiment. They were immediately available online for a short time but then removed secretly and without any open communication about it. I understand that no one in charge here wants a serious, open-minded discussion about CS but if you’re going to delete comments that don’t say “yes, the LT sucks!” then just be open about it.
by the way, my originally deleted comment is now back. it’s right above the one where i complained that it was deleted.
sorry i’m not going on and on about how CS/LT is evil and should be sued into a lawsuit. if that’s what it takes to keep comments from being deleted i’ll try and be a good little boy and tow the OCS party line. i’ll work harder on being being brainwashed by you guys.
joe k stop being an ULF dick ! ok.
You have nothing to say to support the LT . Because you do not have anything positive to say. So STFU!!
but keep coming back for more. really, “be welcome” to go elsewhere if you don’t like what they are doing. as long as significantly more people enjoy it than hate on it they’ll obviously are going to keep doing it anyway.
This sounds so much like ULFs mass email telling people to leave .So he can get drunk being global ambassador RULING the whole of EUROPE.
HEIL ULF !! For the last few year he has been telling everyone to LEAVE. NO !! NOT GOING TO HAPPEN .So run along joe cocken before you are kick in yer butt
The comment was not deleted, it was in spam queue. This queue currently has over 10 000 items on it, and checking the first few pages (some dozens of comments) all but two were about viagra, linkspam etc.
Comment not appearing has also been happening at times lately but the comments were only caught up in the spam queue.
Seriously, next time you find a comment “deleted” please just let the admins know before crying wolf.
Thanks,
Anu
“stop being an ULF dick ! ok.”
“So he can get drunk being global ambassador RULING the whole of EUROPE.”
“So run along joe cocken before you are kick in yer butt”
If the majority of CSers were filling the site with pointless insults that don’t make any sense and are just meant to wound others on CouchSurfing like the vast majority is doing here I’d cancel my membership. Thank god CS isn’t like OCS. How about instead of “Open” you guys change it to Obscene CS?
If you guys want to call each other names and play kid games, great. Have fun with that. But why bother? Do you really want a CS where so much hatred is constantly spread around and where anyone who differs from your point of view is immediately tagged as an drunk, traitorous outcast? You “cry wolf” about being asked to leave an organization you have such disdain for but then follow it up with “So run along joe cocken before you are kick in yer butt.”
The hypocrisy here is simply outstanding. Good job, OCS. If you ever had a worthwhile point it’s long gone now.
Tchus Joe Kocken you just showed you had no valid input at all. You are a loser . And we knew from the beginning you had no thing to say which could show you had a case.
Now run along kiddo there are a lot of drunken dope parties coming to your part of the world go have fun . And stop showing us you know shit.
“Seriously, next time you find a comment “deleted” please just let the admins know before crying wolf.”
Seriously, next time you lecture a poster please read what they wrote. It appeared live on the site immediately and then later disappeared and was somehow labeled as spam much later. Please think up a better story to spin next time. The smoke on this one is too easy to see through.
A comment marked as spam is still visible for the author until he/she cleans the browser cache/cookies. Or just uses another computer. After this the server can’t recognize the author anymore, so the comment mysteriously “disappears” until it’s rescued by one of the admins.
Seriously, the next time you lecture about “OCS is only spreading conspiracy” reread your posts here.
So we can all learn what specifically sets it off, let’s re-examine my comment so that you guys who know the spam filter so well can tell everyone what was questionable so that hopefully no one else gets caught up:
““…and will calm a lot of people who are forced to think in terms of conspiracy theory and misuse of funds” is pretty naive, valeri, considering the history of OCS. anything that’s said is flagged by you guys as smoke and PR mind games. no one here is willing to give CS the benefit of any doubt even though it’s always been run the same way by the same people that brought you the website in the first place. the same website that keeps people like you logging in so frequently. complain and complain but keep coming back for more. really, “be welcome” to go elsewhere if you don’t like what they are doing. as long as significantly more people enjoy it than hate on it they’ll obviously are going to keep doing it anyway.”
Where specifically is the issue everyone should be aware of from these careful spam filters? Also, how long is it available on the site in cache and cookies before it dissapears? I wonder if this post will get held up by those same filters since it contains much of the same content that supposedly stopped it last time?
Thanks for enlightening us, Midsch!
I can’t tell you what makes the spamfilter think your comment is spam ( I don’t even know what plugin in is used), but if the filter does is job, a once rescued comment should be go through in a similar form the second time. So you can’t prove anything with your reposting here.
>Also, how long is it available on the site in cache and cookies before it dissapears?
It’s a matter of your browser/system settings and completely independent from the ocs-server/blog software/spamfilters.
Just an additional remark: if you setup a public blog with wordpress like this, it takes only a few days until the spambots start attacking it. this is even true for more or less inactive and unkown blogs, you can expect at least some spamcomments every day. active and present blogs like this (and you help with every comment) can easily “harvest” hundreds of spamcomments a day. So it’s simply necessary to use an automatic plugin, but like every spamfilter for mail it fails from time to time (in both directions). No bad intentions involved.
midsch
We use the Akismet spam filter, which is pretty much a standard for WordPress. As Midsch pointed out, it’s quite impossible to say exactly what triggered it. Maybe because you didn’t use capitals for your sentences?
In any case, our spam filter has caught 11.500 individual pieces of spam comment so far. Be happy we have it installed.
TO joe whoever,
you’re entitled to your opinion.
I jsut post what i think, i am not part of OCS. Neither are you. Big deal. I’ve had numerous posts lost on here too, with no idea why, run a wordpress spam filter and i guess we’ll see.
I really doubt that i am naive about CS, OR about the attitudes of the many many AMBASSADORS and other volunteers who simply want clear communication and information, otherwise they DO lose trust. How the ‘leaders’ can’t get that, i have no idea, they clearly have an ‘all or nothing, with us or against, war on them’ kind of attitude which prevents them from hearing criticism even from their own good friends who have spoken out in concern.
If they want praise all the time, all they need to do is communicate TRUTHFULLY and they will get praise: it’s very simple.
However every time there’s an official publication – like the Thai Collective report which did not acknowledge the work of key volunteers and claimed it all happened in thailand without showing any of it – they don’t report truthfully. so to spel it out for you:
SILENCE from the LT –> Complaints
Lies, half-truths, spin –> complaints
No response from the LT –> complaints
open and truthful communication –> Praise
With that equation maybe you can figure it out. Seriously, continuing to say ‘it’s not so’ when round after round of CS volunteers say ‘yes it is’ is truly ridiculous.
“open and truthful communication –> Praise”
Optimistic, but history says otherwise. They are damned if they do, damned if they don’t by OCS and the few other detractors out there. Why would they spend more time on this one thing (which equals less elsewhere) shelling out more things for you (not you, specifically, but yes, you, too) to complain about? Everything they do is fodder for more flaming here. I can see putting out more matches for you guys to set their shit on fire isn’t a top priority for them. Read through this site. It’s way more full of personal attacks, senseless insults, and attacks on any and every effort to do things better. It’s far from unbiased and largely intended to hurt those responsible for making the change. Really, why waste time trying to appease you?
I hope they aren’t spending too much time trying to put things out in a way that doesn’t provoke this site to flame, because it’s pointless. But they probably (or hopefully) do try and think of ways of being clear across cultures in their communication and not misrepresenting things. But nevertheless, the benefit of the doubt is never, ever here. There’s no true analysis, just instant damnation. It’s YOU guys that are helping to hamper the speed of progress, not provoking more change.
They would if
1) They really cared and respected couch surfers everywhere just like in the old time before the crash
2) They understood it would be a win-win situation where everyone won and everyone helped make couchsurfing stronger just like before the crash .
Before the crash there were no personalities or power pockets or hierarchies,
You either know that or you do not.
To doubtful:
>>Optimistic, but history says otherwise. They are damned if they do, damned if they don’t by OCS and the few other detractors out there.
hmmmm… i haven’t seen much truthful communication from the CS leaders in er… well, trying to remember when. Please supply some examples of that… my impression is that when there IS communication, it’s often not truthful, doesn’t address the issues, is poorly done according to professional standards of people who would have been willing to do the work… have you or the LT considered that criticism is deserved? Ever really reconsidered the typical operating mode of ‘only communicate things to our personal friends, we have no obligations to communicate with the network’ is not optimal?
The main point you are ignoring is that the very few people who read or post on here don’t matter, but the ambassadors and volunteers of CS do matter, and they have been complaining and going through cycles of disenchantment without any input, support, or communication for a long time now. Really, it’s just bad leadership to ignore your own volunteers and even good Burning Man friends.
I think the problem with CS is that some people get too big “melon”.
What is the problem if Casey makes money ? what is the problem if they pay people working for the website ?
Isn’t it the dream of anybody to do such a kind of website with strong community and be able to give jobs to some people (friends or not)
People should stop being jaleous and see bad intentions everywhere… and even if there are … you delete yoru profile and go away. create your own website.