To preserve this information in case of a decision by the CS ‘leadership’ to suspend my profile for having the wrong hairdo or something, and because OCS attracts more readers than my CS profile, what follows is my current list of 10 reasons for not using CouchSurfing.com. It is personal, not exhaustive, and contains little explanation. Still, I hope it will give first-time visitors to this website some kind of overview of all that is wrong with CouchSurfing.com. Comments and additions (and corrections if factually incorrect!) are much appreciated.
- The company that owns CouchSurfing.com, CouchSurfing International inc., is privately owned and has Casey Fenton as is its sole owner and director. He holds all power over the company and, consequently, the website. This means that, when push comes to shove,
- He cannot be held accountable for how donations are spent
- He can sell CouchSurfing.com to whomever and walk away with the dough whenever he gets tired of it
- CS users have no of influence whatsoever on anything CS-related
- Although incorporated as a not-for-profit, CouchSurfing International inc. is not a charitable organisation. Not-for-profit status only means that the company cannot pay dividend to its owners (i.e. Casey); the company and its assets still are his, and his alone. Casey can do with it whatever he wants, whenever he wants it
- In addition, not-for-profit status does give not any kind of guarantee that company assets are not utilised for personal enrichment. For instance, as its sole owner/director, Casey can give out loans to himself or others at zero-interest rates, and use that money privately to make a profit
- Such potential abuse of company assets is even easier because CouchSurfing International inc. does not appear genuinely interested in obtaining a “501c3″ tax exemption. Non-profit organisations can easily apply for this designation with the IRS, but it requires compliance with strict disclosure and reporting duties, plus having a board of directors, and Casey doesn’t like that much openness. Therefore, part of user donations is waisted on avoidable tax-paying
- Most importantly, CouchSurfing International inc. does not have a clause in its bylaws that irrevocably dedicates company assets to a charitable cause. This means that Casey can always revoke the company’s not-for-profit designation and cash in, by volition but also by necessity (for instance, when he or the company ever get sued for damages)
- In clause 5.1 of the Terms of Use, CouchSurfing International inc. claims a virtually unbounded and irrevocable right to use whatever material you decide to upload to its servers for its own purposes, without limiting these in any way. This opens up the road to selling user data, including your contact and site usage details, to third parties. At the same time, CouchSurfing International inc. does not have a published policy detailing how they keep your personal information safe
- There are no published protocols how the company deals with users committing crimes (violence, abuse, theft…) that involve other users; instead, these appear to be dealt with in an ad hoc fashion. In addition, it is extremely difficult to find who’s responsible for what when it comes to safety. By being so negligent, CouchSurfing International inc. puts the users of CS at risk
- On the whole, CouchSurfing.com scores very poorly on transparency. There are hardly any protocols about anything; there is no full list of people on the payroll of CouchSurfing International inc., information is scattered across countless forums and scores of mailgroups, etc. The current management seems to take no interest whatsoever in even starting to improve this situation
- Apart from being fraudfully sollicited (i.e., under the pretext that CS is a charity / non-profit), aspiring volunteers are asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement in which they cede all rights on the material they develop to CouchSurfing International inc.
- All known employees of CouchSurfing International inc. (i.e., Casey Fenton, Matthew Brauer, Jim Stone and Weston Hankins, all of whom are members of the Leadership Team) are male caucasian US citizens.
- The verification procedure is a blatant scheme for increasing donations. It does not offer any kind of added security, and could be carried out at a fraction of the current fee
- What little financial information is available gives cause for suspicion. There are interesting discrepancies between assets and interest gained, and attempts to get this clarified are met with deafening silence
- Casey and the other employees of CouchSurfing International inc., as well as the influential volunteers in CouchSurfing.com simply do not respond to any kind of question or criticism at all, while still hammering on CS being a community-thing
let me add one:
they apparently changed the ToU and are now under the illusion that posting it in ambassadors public is sufficient to enact it. the way poor rachel words this posting implies that she thinks that the ToU are actually legally binding to users when CS changes them without the user agreeing to the new tou.
its interesting to see how naive in regards to even the most basic legal proceedings the lt seems to be.
http://www.couchsurfing.com/group_read.html?gid=2125&post=479912
also, may i use your 10 reasons not to use cs and put it into my profile? it would be nice to start a “profile summary virus” to spread the world about the problems, after all ALOT of cs critical people have ALOT of friends and links to their profile.
Why the hell are you still a CS member? You list ten reasons that seem to be strong reasons for you not to but yet you’re still on there. Are you a hypocrite or do you just enjoy surrounding yourself with things that make you miserable?
If I made a list about 10 reasons for not eating chocolate I’d look like a fool if I continued to eat it, right?
How about 10 reasons to use CS? Or is OCS just all about pointing out what you hate about CS?
@zakor: “also, may i use your 10 reasons not to use cs and put it into my profile?”
this is like saying “may i use your 10 reasons not to eat chocolate and put write it on the next chocolate bar i eat?”
@troll
you must certainly love the bush government, given that you argue the same way they do.
zak - i’m assuming the “attack dog”-like label was for me. and yes, very typical of you (and OCS) to ignore the issue that YOU bring up and instead make personal attacks. could this be why OCS has been such a monumental failure?
continually disgusted “Why the hell are you still a CS member? ”
. Its always good to know who your enemies are. And so much for a trust network bringing intercultural understanding.
lets see who have used this before Mandy, Donna Ulf . Telling people to get out of cs.
continually disgusted please do back to the “failed” brainstorm group and do some brainstorming which will NEVER reach the LT to get implemented.
continually disgusted “If I made a list about 10 reasons for not eating chocolate I’d look like a fool if I continued to eat it, right?”
You are a fool only if you think you are a fool . And you just made your self look stupid .
@daz: i know it’s hard for you (or maybe impossible?) to not result immediately to personal attacks, but is that what OCS is really all about, or just you?
continually disgusted “ignore the issue that YOU bring up and instead make personal attacks. ”
You are really dumb aint ya ?
You tell people to leave cs
continually disgusted
Nov 7th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
Why the hell are you still a CS member?
You call them hypocrites
continually disgusted
Nov 7th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
Are you a hypocrite
You call label them fools
and then talk about personal attacks?
dumbing it down for the slow one “but is that what OCS is really all about, or just you?”
Welcome to the idiots anonymous . Like all the attack dogs on couchsurfing you cannot distinguish between people
“Monumental failure”, in what aspects? Because the leadership is not responding?
I’m not aware of the current site view statistics, Thomas might be. As far as I can remember it was a pretty impressive number at one point given the attempt of CS to suppress in every way possible promoting the site.
Guess what: I personally am getting continuous stream of inquiries of “my reasons” of participating into openCS, plus some thumbs up for speaking up. Not every day, but enough to keep me happy I am posting here instead of on my way to Thailand for example.
News to the other “pirates”: apparently we’re talking a bit too much here, so lining out “10 reasons for OCS existence” on our frontpage would do quite well in explaining what all this is about and perhaps win over some reasonable people (this was a newbie surfer I happened to meet recently who found it a bit hard to find the essence of this campaign upon stumbling into my profile and then in person)
Disputing wording on point 2.
I think CS is incorporated as a not-for-profit corporation.
It is different from being a charity, which it appears not to be.
It is different from having tax-exempt status (501c3), which it has yet to attain.
Point 7.
Stop racially profiling people!
The rest of the points allude to the problems, but i think their argument can still be cleaned up and tightened up to be stronger… and need to be less flame war attracting.
@Anu: “Guess what: I personally am getting continuous stream of inquiries of “my reasons” of participating into openCS, plus some thumbs up for speaking up.”
Out of the 350,000+ CS members, or even the 800 or so people that sign up every day, how many of them are emailing you with words of support? Even 0.01% (3,500 of total or 8 a day) would surprise me although it would hardly be an impressive (or effective) number. But what is your margin for what you would call a success and not a complete failure of OCS?
You are all welcome to start your own community or join others, there are at least 7 out there that are clearly much better than CS
Its unfortunate all these details derail a desire for just meeting people and travel.
I don’t see a single reason you list that outline this, its nearly all business items you will see no other community website complaining about in the Travel Hosting arena.
Please please please tell me a more transparent organization that is comparable and CS can go study that
uaflyer “Its unfortunate all these details derail a desire for just meeting people and travel.”
I really agree with you here.It should be all about travel and meeting people .But with hiearchies ambassadors,LT,casey the cult god.There are no equals on cs anymore.It used to be like that before the crash and before Dan hoffman got in those corporate ideals .If hoffman had just like cs be the way it was it would have done just fine.
uaflyer ” you will see no other community website complaining about in the Travel Hosting arena.”
Umm no other ? Most of the online travel communities do have complaints .But cs has the most . Any ideas why?
@daz: “Most of the online travel communities do have complaints .But cs has the most .”
really? wow! surely you’re not just making this up so please show us your detailed source for this info as i’m sure i’m not the only one who would love to see it. thanks for the investigative reporting daz!
“please show us your detailed source for this info ”
Do your own homework
This shows either you are really naive or a total newbie.
@Ben
I checked again, and you’re right about the legal part; I adapted that piece of text. As to the point about all its employees being white US males, that has little to do with racial profiling. It just goes to show that Casey is more interested in hiring his chums than in trying to get the best people for each position.
@curious:
as I said, the “openCS message” has not really been broadcasted to all 300k+ CS members, the LT would never ever do this (they refused to publish a story on the front page for example which could have reached anyone visiting the site). Even the most active & populated group on CS (Brainstorm) only has less than 1000 members. And even there it’s been made clear anything but “positive contributions” should go elsewhere.
do your homework
So I consider the steady stream of input as a success considering the actual number of people who have been exposed to this campaign. (it shows people do care and are curious enough to ask, and probably for 1 person who asks there’s at least a couple of more who “just” read)
If you happen to have access to distributing CS newsletter, maybe we could then see how much of a “failure” this would be?
The success of OpenCS is huge measured in terms of people who started volunteering for a hospitality exchange network that has decent organizational values (without any Newspeak).
With this in mind it’s a bit premature to know if OpenCS is successful now.
@Niels Smit: See Organisation Information on the Wiki for links to the Secretary of State for New Hampshire web site where you will find the company filings. The company is incorporated as a non-profit. However, this status could be easily changed with minimal tax implications.
@Callum: I find your comment a wee bit confusing. Are you implying that the facts in my post are *still* incorrect?
“Out of the 350,000+ CS members, or even the 800 or so people that sign up every day, how many of them are emailing you with words of support?”
just yesterday i recieved an email by someone i never heard of, keep in mind i dont have the 10 commandments against cs nor ocs stuff on my profile:
“Thank you
Thank you so much, i read your profile and i get what
happen with this site.”
@bentivogli: I see you’ve updated the original post of the text. I was working from the original version because that’s what I have in my feed reader. I think the current text is accurate.
As a side note, I’d recommend against editing posts. If they must be edited I’d recommend clearly labelling the edits. My understanding is that a blog post should be identifiable by a single url and should be consistently available on that url.
@Niels: I was being facetious about the racial profiling.
But to the point of just hiring friends… I think it may have to do with how businesses generally work. People do business with who they like to do business with. People hire people they already know; people that they consider good (whatever good is); people they can get along with. This is especially true in the tech startup world (think silicon valley). It does not surprise me because there are very real pressures in boot strapping and growing an organization (profit or not) where the founder/owner/partner needs to place certain trusts into others to get things done.
Note that “trust” and “good” is very subjective. So, it depends on the point of view of the founder/owner/partner.
Or, maybe another answer for US centric hires is that there may be legal and financial hurdles when trying to hire non-US employees that they do not want to deal with at this time?
The reasons for CS hirings are pure speculation on my part. But I do have that first hand experiences in that area of trying to bootstrap an organization. It was just a small band of friends.
@Ben: I agree that there are good reasons to hire friends and I’m familiar with starting companies, it’s always easier to work with people you know and get on with. However, CouchSurfing had a lot of willing, able volunteers working for them for free. I believe it would have been better / fairer / more ethical / etc to offer these people the jobs. To offer reward for those doing the most work, and to do so openly.
I guess that’s what it comes down to. Casey hired his friends in private. There was no application process, no jobs advertised. That wouldn’t be legal if CS was a charity.
@Callum: No doubt. CS seems to squandered– I can’t tell if it was really malice or just plain stupidity– the good will of several volunteers, and the opportunity for them to be part of the hired help.
That whole job search process seemed rush and not-transparent. I don’t know enough of what actually transpired to give a fair opinion on the CS hiring process.
@callum+ben
i do think the announcement of an open position in the techteam was more of a pr thing. i am pretty sure that casey and whoever had already figured this out with weston and just made this public announcement to attempt to get some good pr, avoiding a “casey hired someone out of nowhere” debate.
i think it was all just a pr game.
@Kasper: “The success of OpenCS is huge measured in terms of people who started volunteering for a hospitality exchange network that has decent organizational values (without any Newspeak).”
Wait, so you’re telling me that even so you say “OpenCouchSurfing: The campaign for a truly open CouchSurfing organisation” [sic] isn’t really about opening up CS but about diverting volunteer resources to BW? Why aren’t you honest about this intention on the rest of the website and stop trading on the CS name? That seems pretty low even for you Kasper.
@bentivogli: i’m assuming that despite your rant about why everyone shouldn’t use CS that you’re still a member, right? Don’t you feel that’s hypocritical? If not, what are the 10 reasons that you DO use CS? I know it’s not popular here to actually say nice things about this website that everyone here at least claims to love but maybe it’s worth a shot?
@i almost missed this…
as stupid as ever :). The new breed of knuckleheads on couchsurfing. Guess couchsurfing has become so boring you have come here ?
we love ya even if you are a major knucklehead
Spin happens everywhere on the Web.
I can agree its overdone on CS in the last year.
A more genuine and truthful communication with users and the internet needs to evolve on CS.
The marketing and especially the Site communications are far overdone.
Latest news is not fair and just cherry picks events of more personal appeal to those running it.
I am aware of five HC/CS Camp posts of many active users I know and none went out.
Its time to return to a communication that built the site, this is mot myspace or facebook. The only shareholders to report to are users.
Being too Open has bit CS in the butt and now the finger in the dike isn’t possible.
Either stop sayings its open, or do a clam and close while the tide is low.
PS- Its maybe time to start sniping the other travel websites, as it offers a more realistic comparison of dirty deeds.
I’ve been following the Opencouchsurfing.org from the sideline a bit and this is the first time I feel I have to react since I believe that posts like this are bad both for CS as for OCS. I believe the initial idea of this site was to try to open up couchsurfing, improve it, make it more transparant and use an outside force to do it. Since the start of it I’ve seen good ideas come and go but the last posts I read were more about breaking down then building up. I am aware of the problems within CS and I certainly don’t want to minimize them but you’re all acting like any other organisation is soo much better and doesn’t have any problems.
@daz: “Most of the online travel communities do have complaints .But cs has the most .”
I’m naieve so tell me what that source is you get that from. It’s easy to say everybody has to do his own homework. I can state whatever I want to and then claim you didn’t do your homework because you couldn’t find a backup of what I stated. So an easy link to where you have found that trade-off between “online travel communities” would be nice.
If there isn’t anything like that maybe that might be something for a post… Compare HC, CS, GF, BW,… and all the others in an honest way with honest criteria. Then you have a solid base to work from complaining, proposing,… ideas and concepts to the online travel communities. Or have you forgotten the mission of OCS:
“Participate in creating a Better and More Open CouchSurfing Organisation, one Freedom at a time.”
Anyhow, it’s good to have a watchdog around. It’s only a pitty that posts like this are out here. (I like most of the other subjects of posts).
And I know I might have been contradicting myself in this comment a couple of times but hey, I’m that naieve knucklehead who tries to change things from within the organisation on a low level and who tries to be realistic enough to know that it might not change much but is convinced that in every organisation you have serious flaws and nothing in this world is perfect (and nothing should be perfect since that takes away all the fun).
Anyhow, keep playing the watchdog, stop mindless bashing.
@PMgD you were active in the brainstorm group before the crash after that not seen you active. You used to speak your mind .I have not heard your views on issues since then.
I could furnish links but the admin has deleted most of them and hidden the rest from google searches. (please check with the relevant authorities if you have access to them)
PMgD “Then you have a solid base to work from complaining, proposing”
Well if you were following events at the csc mtl and the csc nz and on the wiki you would have see the solid base of work. You can still check the ocs wiki for some work though it is not as comprehensive as the ones earlier on.
Also you can check the hospitality guide . net but again not a lot of information then there is the google groups . And the ambassador private (which i believe you have access to and not me or the common members) .
The mission is .
Participate in Creating a Better World, One Couch at a Time
Or should I say one donation at a time.
As for your last line .I have nothing to say as it looks like your mind has already been made up by the information you have read. If there is even 000.001% of open minded left please do check and see. I consider you a thinker /inventor? so I hope you will probe further( again that is your call)
PMgD and please try and distinguish between a poster posting a comment and OCS. Just because a poster posts a comment on this site does not make that person ocs .
@PMgD: i know it’s difficult to discover who actually considers themselves “OCS” or not, especially when “Daz” is the only one regularly posting. The silence from the guys can be deafening, right? It says a lot. Or maybe you just have to read elsewhere…
To see why they’ve given up (and the only “voice” to jump on those who question OCS belongs to whoever the anonymous “Daz” is) just read Thomas’s post here: http://groups.google.com/group/open-couchsurfing/browse_thread/thread/3b464fea59a10d2a/bb7a1ff8c0ffee44?hl=en#bb7a1ff8c0ffee44
my last post didn’t show up. there was no message about having to wait and this is only the second time when it didn’t immediately show up on the site. why is that?
i wonder how long the unregistered “Daz” has to wait for his comments to be so-called “approved”…
@”time to face the music” the time will come soon .
. Ace up a lot of peoples sleeve.
Ok, I guess we’re back in kindergarten.
A few service announcements:
1. Please stop with the paranoia surrounding the approval of comments. We have lives besides OCS and will not jump every time you *chose* to make an *anonymous* comment. Get yourself registered and/or quit complaining, please. (I’ll remind you that automatic approval of anonymous comments would make this site into a spamfest in a few days, so it’s not even a policy we *can* change.)
2. The post you graciously link to ties the end of my PERSONAL involvement to a possible LAWSUIT. I know it might be to difficult to understand, but this doesn’t mean that OCS will cease to exist because I chose to quit. Also, since I haven’t gotten word about Pickwick taking genuine action, I can’t really follow up on my commitment either.
In general, I have to say the anonymity that is offered here might very well be withdrawn if this behavior continuous. Don’t worry, you can still be insulting, but you’d have to put your name on it. And before you start your rant about that, realize that anonymity is not mentioned ANYWHERE as a goal of OCS. Be happy it lasted for so long.
“also, since I haven’t gotten word about Pickwick taking genuine action, I can’t really follow up on my commitment either.”
he has stated on cs that he did, here is the quote and link to where i quoted from
“I then took some time to read and digest all the advice I got by email, both pro and con, before finally deciding to file the complaint.
If and when the matter goes to court will depend on the New Hampshire Attorney General’s decision how she wants to handle the complaint, so you better ask her. Here’s how you can reach her:
Kelly A Ayotte
Attorney General
33 Capitol Street
Concord, NH 03301
United States of America
Fon (603) 271-3658
Fax (603) 271-2110
Hope this helps.”
http://www.couchsurfing.com/group_read.html?gid=429&post=493937#post496158
@cont… (maybe OCS should give you a name).
My last comment was in the queue for a day as well. There was a link in it and I was to lazy to register (like now). A necessary spam protection (my spamkarma catches at least 50 spamcomments a day in a more or less unknown blog), so keep cool.
But if you think your comments are so urgent, go and register yourself, you don’t loose your anonymity by doing so, it’s only impossible to impress your readers with your namefinding competence.
@midsch: tried to register, didn’t work. i get the email confirmation, click the links, and can’t log in. it does the same thing that it does from my comments and just reloads the page. i’ve tried for a password reset and that doesn’t work either.
it’s easier for OCS to bash me on the anonymous user thing than actually deal with what i have to say, so it’s completely understandable if they are preventing me from actually registering.
@benti: we’re still waiting for either:
- your 10 reasons for remaining a cs member
- your resignation of your cs account
- admitting you’re just a hypocrite that likes to bitch
so which is it?
@tg: I’m quoting you here:
“It’s time. I think most people here will agree that the OCS has reached it’s final recourse…I believe that we can put our campaign to rest after this. If nothing comes out of this, which is a very real possibility, then perhaps it’s also time to admit that we can’t change the way things are and get on with our lives.”
nothing has come out of pickwick’s bluff about his “factual” information. ocs championed the idea and everyone let it fall to nothing. why? here are my guesses:
-no balls to follow through. plain and simple.
-the “facts” that pickwick kept throwing out weren’t factual at all. there was no base for an lawsuit and it was safer to just keep threatening and yelling.
-simple apathy. claim to care about cs but do nothing constructive, just bitchbitchbitch. you like your soapbox position and it’s not in your interest to really change cs unless it’s exactly how you want it changed (which you don’t really feel is going to happen, i’m sure).
so i ask you too: which is it?
@if only it were that easy…
just registered and logged in with the given name / password combination out of the email, worked fine for me. (FYI: I was using a tool to hide my real ip-adress, have a real agressive skript blocker (no scripts at all), but had to allow a cookie to make it work.)
@time to face the music
“claim to care about cs but do nothing constructive”
you didn’t do your homework or you know it’s a lie. there are people (also at openCS) who never started volunteering, because they don’t like the conditions. but you should know very well, that part of the people somehow belonging to openCS worked their arses off to improve CS. probably without them CS wouldn’t have survived the crash in 2006 healthier and more growing than ever, definetly the mapsurf and the wiki wouldn’t exist, not counting a lot of small work (and a lot of good ideas - It’s not openCS’s fault that a lot of it hasn’t been realised).
not liking the openCS ideas/ideals and having the power not to realise them is one thing. the pseudoleninistic*) way it happened is another.
midsch (not horst)
ps: calling someone “liking to bitch” the way you do here, is somehow bad style. hidden behing a fake identity it’s not exactly what i’d call “having balls” (like you demand from others as well). of course you’ll will call it a constructive way to improve both openCS and CS. but please don’t expect to create too much discussion out of it. at other places you’d have been put into a “politics-group” or got completely banned.
*) I did a lot of research about radical groups - mostly in germany - for my studies at university. And more than once in the last month CS-leadership makes me remember this stuff.
@the musical guy
You obviously don’t read what I write and again make critical mistakes by assuming (for instance) that I have anything to do with Pickwick personally. I have never mailed or talked to the guy directly, jeez.
Also, if you’re going to quote, try not to make an ass of yourself: “I believe that we can put our campaign to rest after this.” Which part of “after this” don’t you understand? And Zak0r’s link should put you right in any case, while *still* not contradicting what I’m saying. But do enjoy your own soapbox position here.
“I did a lot of research about radical groups - mostly in germany - for my studies at university. And more than once in the last month CS-leadership makes me remember this stuff.”
indeed, thats what i consider sad aswell, the cs leadership is employing various mechanics that are usually the tools of the trade of dictatorship and opressive regimes in regard to communication.
the only thing they have not done yet is shut down the communication within the site, which they might have realized would backfire quickly due to the fact that they have no means to control anything outside the cs page.
Now where did i mention the “private group” the cat is out of the bag!! please check post gid=429&post=430011#post501355 this clearly shows how Mattthew the “general manager” hides all the information .And do see his explanation . This is about how many years?. Again this is just one example .
LT & communications: CS group system was modeled more or less after Tribe.net, where people are free to form subcommunities (”tribes”), and message posted to one only reaches those who are part of it. These are free-to-join / more private with not much “forum” (as in the Greek agora) sense - this would have been necessary for CS-community-wide discussion over unlimited topics.
So the shutdown of communication was side-product of this - feature rather than a bug
Myriads of groups, inner circles, also seems to feed the kind of cultish behavior those who have been around collectives, camps, meetings and online at times have become accustomed to by the “core” (one quite clear example would be referring to Burning Man as “family reunion”).
As far as I’m concerned, I’m calling it institutionalized group think.
@Anu: think about it.
I think Benti had it right: “let go and do nothing. Also, let’s give the readership some credit; anyone sincerely interest in our critiques will be able to see through some trolls’ posts.
Niels”
It’s possible that CS thought the same thing about the OCS trolls. Don’t ya think?
@still waiting
I admit that “ten facts about CouchSurfing.com that might put off aspiring users from signing up in the first place” would have been a better title for my post, but I like the short-hand version just as much. Although you doubtlessly disagree, this in my opinion answers all three of your ‘questions’ to me, so don’t bother trying to provoke a further response because there won’t be any.
@Neils: “ten facts about CouchSurfing.com that might put off aspiring users from signing up in the first place”
OK I understand. So there’s a difference between new people signing up and old members continuing to use the site every day, right?
Remember, I’m don’t hate OCS, I’m just trying to make it better. Continuing to ignore discussion only puts you all in the same position that you complain about receiving from the LT.
For the sake of transparency, I think everyone should understand that one of my last comments has been waiting more than a day to be “approved”.
@also / irony: Your comment was in the queue for moderation, but I now realise the notification emails were being sent to the wrong address. I’ve updated the address so I will receive notifications, in which case, they should be approved as soon as I’m online. Apologies for the delay on this occasion, as you’ll see the comment is now approved. It was held because it contains a link.
Thanks for the detailed explanation Callum! I appreciate the transparency and actually getting an answer to a question. It’s nice to know that not ALL topics raised on this site (aside from the ones that don’t mock everything the LT does) are completely ignored or ridiculed
It’s not that I hate OCS, I’m just trying to make it better.
Thanks etc etc: it would help if you would rather use the nickname ability provided by this blog for something else than labeling your content.
It’s not that I hate you, just want to help with the quality of your contributions
I’ll second Anu’s comments. I believe for anyone to be taken seriously as a single person, they need to use a consistent identity. What I mean is, if one person continually posts under different names with no particular theme, it’s unlikely that person will be taken seriously.
So my recommendation to continually disgusted / irony / etc / etc is to choose a nickname and an email address (whether genuine or not) and stick to using those. This way I believe people will take you more seriously and are more likely to respond to your points.
I, for one, will respond to points raised in a calm, non inflammatory tone, but will ignore what I consider to be trolling.
ok, this is the nick i’ll stick to as a tribute to the words of tg. i’d love to heed your advice and use a registered account but the one i registered won’t work for whatever reason. i’ve confirmed it, had the password reset 2 or 3 times and tried logging in 4 or 5 times but it never works for some strange reason. so i’m forced to use this even more anonymous way of posting.
and now back to the issue:
@Neils: “ten facts about CouchSurfing.com that might put off aspiring users from signing up in the first place”
what is the difference between someone who is new to CS not using it and one that recognizes the problems yet continues to still carry on being an active member? how is that not hypocritical?
—
and now here’s where (even in face of OCS history that tells me otherwise) i’m going to be optimistic. it’s going to be real easy for you to jump all over the first part of this “comment” and disregard the actual issue, but surely OCS is above that, right?
@time to face the music: If you tell me the username you registered, I’ll reset the password and email it to you. You should then be able to log in and change it yourself.
You said:
I think there is a hypocrisy in stating reasons why you would not use CouchSurfing and then continuing to use it yourself. In my view, it’s clearly hypocritical.
My personal opinion is that CouchSurfing provides a “net beneficial service”. I think overall it does more good than harm. So I prefer to use BeWelcome when I can, but if there aren’t the members, I fall back on CouchSurfing.
@the musical guy: Also keep in mind the for some CS has been an active part of life for a couple of years. It’s not easy to leave behind all those connections, regardless that some of them are more on a superficial level.
As every other social network (at least so far, let’s see what happens when Google gears up with their plan for world domination) CS also is a walled garden and you can’t easily transfer your social capital elsewhere. (in fact I’m not sure I’d even want to “rob” my friends out of CS even if I could, the net benefit still is substantial enough. I’d just prefer not to have them go through with CS volunteering what I had to go through)
@the musical guy
There are 10 good reasons not to smoke, not to drive a car, etc. Of course people won’t necessarily quit something they can find problems with. As Anu pointed out, there are often annoying side-effects when you decide to quit something you dislike (eg. withdrawal effects, not being able to get to your work in time or losing a lot of your online friends).
However, each and every one of the problems Niels has listed could be fixed and fixing them would improve the site tremendously. And yet, instead of looking at the arguments, you attack Niels for listing them. What do you think CS could improve about it’s financial, legal and organizational model? If you can’t list 10 serious problems, you have your head in the sand.
It is sad to see how the ambassadorship program started by the Daniel Hoffer has caused power to go to peoples heads. This virtual power has also separated the ambassadors from the red. I was just reading the Antwerp group and wow I could not believe that people had so much love for a virtual badge .
Statements like “we ambassadors are having a meeting ” (more like you non ambassadors are nobody and are not invited. Normal people in real life has made petty group due to the virtual bad or Ambassador. Also the bureaucracy of hiding what they discussed. Stalling on posting reports of the meeting.
People are so scared to lose their badge of “country ambassador” it is really sad to see how power makes people take sides and lose objectivity.
I came on the antwerp group follow the trail for one of the nominated city ambassadors luca.This guy is so immature they leaves negative references because he is angry?? I really want to know who made this guy a city ambassador .Check the conflict resolution group for more information.
Luca Proculo Gentile is a CS City Ambassador for Antwerpen, Belgium!
This is what this guy wrote on the conflict resoltion group
“but I just want to leave the reference to her cause I felt really bed, that’s it.”
by Valerio Arduino Gentile from London, United Kingdom
Valerio Arduino Gentile to Ambassador K?
“I asked you to find the emails that are a proof for me.
then you told me that you will check the emails and we will talk with the girls with with tree phone connections:”
Valerio Arduino Gentile
I don’t know it,my Brother is ambassador I will ask him about, I don’t know this situation don’t looking clear to me I am thinking to write all on the link .I have to say you good bye…
To very nice points here . A potential abuse is asking an ambassador to find email ? whose
?
Also It is always good to have a brother in power to get information
@Daz: Is that you Thomas?
@The rest
Let me reply on a couple of comments made here about the discussion on having a “city ambassadors election” in Antwerp.
1) Nobody of the Belgian ambassadors has a problem with the election itself. What we do have a problem with is that it is organized by members who are not that active in the Belgium group, not active on meetings and basicly not that involved in the Belgium Cs community. The members who are active we meet regularly, they organize meetings, they try to add value to the community. There has never been a post in the Belgium group, the Antwerp group or any other Belgian group where one of the 4 states that they have an issue with the current ambassadors. The whole CS-Belgium ambassadors team became ambassadors and took the “tasks” involved serious because they were basicly already doing all those things. Nobody cares about their badges, but it does give the possibility to send out the greeting messages, approve meeting messages,… Also, non of the people who want to have another city ambassador for Antwerp has ever done any effort to put themselves or others forward as candidate. There hasn’t been a single person who volunteerded to become an Ambassador been rejected (for Belgium).
Every single belgian ambassador is doing the best they can in their way and how it works best for them. It’s the same that was the proposal for the “representative”(as we started to call the one who was going to be elected). Let the representative decide himself what he wants to do. All great and wonderful, but let’s not forget that the ambassadors also do a couple of tasks like take time to greet new members, (help) organize meetings, react on these accusations telling us we (as CS-Belgium) are not transparant enough, that we only became ambassadors because we are friends of friends (I’ll come back to that),…
We asked what the election team thinks the city ambassador should do, what is expected from him by the community and things like that. Not in a specific way but in general. If you’re talking about “badges”, why elect a “representative” and give him a fancy name if you can’t describe what you (as a community) expect from it.
2) Note on transparancy by the CS-Belgium Ambassadors & the meeting of the ambassadors: the meeting minutes of our previous meeting are online already on our wike page (posted 1 day after that meeting somewhere in june/july 2007), the meeting minutes of the last meeting will be online shortly but we’re still working on that report. The reason why we kept it private (although posted on the meeting page so everybody could see that we were going to have a meeting and who was going to be there, so it would have been easy to contact us if you really wanted to join but we did not get any mails like that), is pritty simple. We wanted to meetup with eachother and see what we as a group could do to improve a couple of things, not decide on anything, but work as a filter and propose that. We have also been discussing security issues and alike which is not something I believe should be thrown out into the public domain without a good word about it. Again, the documents about that meeting will be online shortly but with the whole discussion on the Antwerp group and still having a normal job (and hosting), I haven’t had the time to finish it.
I’ve asked the OCS-people who got together last saturday too (and who decided an election was needed) to create their meeting minutes to tell us what they have been talking about and with which things they had an issue with and which could relate to CS-Belgium (since that is were I can try to make a change). I got the reply that “it was a private meeting” and “I should do my research and check the OCS website”. The offer was there to both put the ideas next to eachother and see how we could improve CS on a small scale already. Show how it should/can be done to the bigger CS-community. I got no descent reply to that. In the Belgium group I believe it’s possible for everybody to post their ideas. No need for an ambassador/representative or whatever you call it. How can you improve something if you only get vague feedback like “read the OCS wiki page”? Anyhow, if somebody can give us some workable constructive ideas on how to make CS-Belgium more open then it is already and work on a way to get the whole community more involved into it, let me know.
As for Luca and his brother: Luca has been most fair in the whole discussion about his brother, taking things like this out of their context is not fair towards him. I do know Luca in person and we don’t match on a personal level but unlike the people from Antwerp here who are complaining all the time he at least took the effort on trying to organise regular meetings to get the community more involved. In all the discussions which have involved him as a person, the personal attacks he has had to indure for several reasons, he has always acted as a mature person. The fact that the whole discussion on Valerio is done in the private ambassadors group is simply because I still believe (’like all of you I might hope) in the fact that somebody is not guilty unless proven otherwise. If discussions like that get thrown out into the public without consideration, it would be wrong but that’s a whole other discussion.
When it comes to Luca, we as a CS-Belgium ambs team, are behind him and a personal attack on him is an attack on all the effort we have been putting into the CS-Belgium community.
If you believe you can do a better job, create a roadmap of workable things, what you want to accomplish as a group, how to implement that in the current structure,… don’t just throw with concepts about transparancy, openness,…
Oh, and about n°7:
How many of the OCS members mentioned on the wiki page are caucasian?
No this is Daz and NOT thomas . And I dont care about the elections .I followed lucas trail and came to the antwerp group . So understand my post is about how people are scared to lose their virtual bagdge .And stops having to sign their names with “country ambassador”.Also I am noticing how many times PMgD has used the word “we”. When you are “country ambassador” you can talk for everyone in belgium i guess.
PMgD “What we do have a problem with is that it is organized by members who are not that active in the Belgium group”
“We” are you talking to many people or for your self. Small little gang it seems to be. Where people talk as a group and not as an individual just like the LT used “we”. Who is we ?This is the cause of power .
PMgD “Luca has been most fair in the whole discussion about his brother, taking things like this out of their context is not fair towards him.”
Please check the conflict resolution group and refer the the text “Mr Ambassador posted there” And the text i quoted from there.
PMgD “took the “tasks” involved serious because they were basicly already doing all those things.”
Stop trying to show that tasks make an ambassador any different . Before the crash anyone who cared used to do those tasks. Not there is a seperation where only a few are allowed into the “private groups” the “cuq”, Useless tasks which anyone can do .
PMgD “but it does give the possibility to send out the greeting messages, approve meeting messages,”
This is the power . the extra privileges to seperate a few from the rest. And if cs allowed all people who cared would have done it . Poeple also do this without the badge just for your extra reference.
PMgD “he at least took the effort on trying to organise regular meetings to get the community more involved. ”
Who cares does that make him any more important or respected? The respect comes for what you do not do on the site like the petty tit for tat references he posted for a girl.
PMgD “he has always acted as a mature person”
There is some really serious problems here.
this guy wrote on the conflict resoltion group
“but I just want to leave the reference to her cause I felt really bed, that’s it.”
Is that mature? Again ambassador supporting ambassadors for no reason.
PMgD “Valerio is done in the private ambassadors group ”
Jusged by a few male ambassadors who may or may not understand what the woman went through. And trial by a few who could be biased either ways. And seeing immature ambassadors like luca i can imagine what happens in the private group.
PMgD “When it comes to Luca, we as a CS-Belgium ambs team, are behind him and a personal attack on him is an attack on all the effort we have been putting into the CS-Belgium community.”
Is that mature? Again ambassador supporting ambassadors for no reason.
This is what we call groupism . Groups due to badges not people talking to people but people who wear virtual badges grouping together to defend someone else in their group. This sounds like the army.
PMgD “If you believe you can do a better job, create a roadmap of workable things, ”
A better job would be to first stops the groupism . The use of “we” when talking and posting. Try and understand an ambassador is not one important in real life so stop making the difference between we the ambassadors and the rest .
Just my views NOT cs , ocs , bs ro ks . I dont care about those i care about the spirit and not groupism , virtual power .
So luca is mature?
Well lets see what he says on this single dating site
kenilchattiero: “I am an Italian boy who lives in Antwerp! - ik ben een italiaan wie in Antwerpen woont !! ”
25 year old man seeking women, 18-45
more about me? couchsurfing dor com slash kenilchattiero
I’m looking for: I am looking for someone who is nice to stay with , I want just to meet new people, I am not looking for a forced date, if it comes, it’s ok, but of corse if we meet each other we will decide what to do. I want just to have fun.
Connecting Singles BelgiumA 100% free Online Dating service for Belgium singles Belgium dating
www connectingsingles be
We are not ordinary immature poster please. All post are with facts and they are open and transparent . not cs,ocs etc.
@PMgD. 2 points:
1) You seem to insist on the fact that OCS is something that has members. It isn’t. EVERYBODY is welcome to post.
2) (this is @Daz as well). The discussion about the Belgian ambassadors is much better served by a post of its own, than to be carried on in the reply section of something totally unrelated.
Its also one of the reason why not to use couch surfing. When you have abusers asking his bother ambassador for information and ambassador K to check someones emails. It is a big security risk
@Daz: As mentioned in the my post several times, when I use “we”, I refer to the ambassadors in Belgium, not to the whole community. Indeed I cannot speak for the whole community. “We, the CS Belgium ambassadors” have had our discussions on OCS, security, transparancy. They chose me as a spokesperson just as like Thomas & C° want to have a “representative” for Antwerp. Having one person to state the opinion of a group has nothing to do with groupism. It makes it clear who you can adress to if you have a problem with that group. It is to make discussions easier.
When I post my 100% personal view on things I mention that too. If you believe that is abuse of power so be it. “We” have organised ourselves to try to add things to the community.
Doing the tasks is a form of commitment beyond the “surf & host” part. Does that make the ambassadors different? Yes. Does it make us “super people”? No, ofcourse not. Before the crash it was indeed possible for most/all members to do greetings, to do problem solving,… All nice and well BUT some people also abused it with more problems as a result. The bigger a community growns the more people who try to abuse it (on all levels indeed) so some rules need to be set-up. Having some kind of structure does not contradict with being open. Having structure does not mean you have abuse of power. (as you suggest)
When it comes to most “privileges” we have: did anybody of you just ask already if they could help out with the greetings? I know of one CS-member from Belgium who has been helping out without being an ambassador. He did that for half a year without any “special status” or alike. I haven’t seen a “can I help out” question passing by. If you really believe that dedicating more time on greetings is a “priveledge”, be my guest. If you really believe that it is a priveledge to be available 24/24, 7/7 for stranded couchsurfers/conflicts/…, go ahead. (Yes, I have had calls at 3am during a normal working week because a couchsurfer had a problem).
Being an ambassador just means you commit on doing those tasks. It does not give me a special status in any way.
Why do you focus that hard on the ambassadors labels? Do you really believe that has changed what we do for couchsurfing? That it changes the way we interact with people, with other CS-members? Do you really believe yourself that we are “priviledges”? The only influence we have on the community is because we are there for the community. Are we “elected by the community”? No indeed we’re not. Hell, I even didn’t apply to become an ambassador but people asked me because I was already doing what I’m still doing: hosting too much, surfing too much, replying in groups too much and spend too much of my working time replying to people.
@Bentivogli: I don’t insist on the fact that OCS is something that has members. I DO insist on the fact that it is not fair to compare a blog (where everybody can post) with something that has members.