I’ve been a member of Hospitality Club since April 2004. I had over 100 positive comments and left about the same number of comments. Then I received this, out of the blue, after not even having logged in for about a month:
Hospitality Club: termination of your membership
Hello grappig,
you seriously abused our rules as outlined on http://rules.hospitalityclub.org, therefore we had to terminate your membership to protect other members and our network.
Greetings,
the Hospitality Club Abuse Team
–
The Hospitality Club
… bringing people together!
http://www.hospitalityclub.org
Rock on Veit!
Please do give more background information…
who’s next?
Perhaps this would be a good time for anyone with significant activity on HC to get contact info of people you want to stay in touch with, as well as save a copy of your profile, comments and whatnot…
Hey Kasper,
i received exactly the same message…
talk about respect from somebody whom I dedicated 3 years of my life to …
Who else got kicked out?
I still have my heart hanging on to HC as it was the first hosting site I’ve ever been on, but this would almost be a reason to erase my profile.
@ Anu
Doing it right now. You never know.
@adia
If you haven’t figured it out yet: A couple of “controversial” members of hospitality club (Kasper, Frank and possibly others) have been kicked out of HC, quite out of the blue. The message Kasper posted is what they were sent as notification (“grappig” is Kaspers HC username).
@ tgoorden
I think you misunderstood.
Adia asked for BACKGROUND information. That means he’s well aware of WHAT happened but he asked about BACKGROUND infos, eg if there was a reason given, some special incident (by special I mean going above the usual controversies) or similar. I suppose we can all guess the “reasons”, but still me myself would also be interested in more background infos.
“If you haven’t figured it out yet” is by the way not exactly the nicest way of starting an answer to somebody just asking a question; I find your agressiveness pretty much out of place in this context.
@ tgoorden
I just read that again I suppose I’m reacting a bit oversensitive and misinterpret. So just forget about my last sentence. Never mind.
Michel83 you need to detach yourself from all orgs (unless you run them even those you would need to close/leave/handover one day ) .There will be times you will have to leave an org your love.And there will be times when the org owner will want to throw you out .
“He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment.”
~~~ Meister Eckhart
Viet is such a nice guy . He follow NVC also . He just sends a message (signed the Hospitality Club Abuse Team) and states rules .He also know removing all bewelcome and other “troublemakers” .Will mean a peaceful existence of HC without those constant questions people were asking after and during monnai. He will with with his aussi pal babso and for any mistake which breaches HC rules.
babso´s rules, BW promotion and will be deleted immediately.
Remember viet listens to no one . So he does not really feel anything .So you should also not feel anything towards him .
Um, what does Kasper being kicked out of HC because he “seriously abused [their] rules” have to do with “opencouchsurfing” exactly?
@babble
the whole travelling thing is about the people, not the webpages. a tiny detail the webpages involved usually also forget, but i am pretty sure most people here see cs/hc/bw as networking between real people who usually met before. therefore, whatever dubious happens in any of the networks should be of interest for opencs, despite the name.
babble babel it is all about transparency and dictatorship prevailing on hospitality sites.Dictatorship can be on various forms
Deleting a member without explanation
Deleting a post withotout explanation
Deletion by proxy (ref chris burly) with a you are fired letter.
Groupism – selection of the couchsurfing thailand collective party poopers.
Breaking up of groups (ref donna/ulf/spyro killing the spirit of the brainstorm group.)
Viet has a lot history and also is one of the first leader to initiate secrecy and all the tactics given above. He is a unique case study . A guy who says there should be on openness on the money he gets from the hospitality site (he recently spent 6 months on a beach with all the money with his girlfriend).
I must admit that I’m not much in favour of threads like these. I’m sure there is some major injustice behind this dramatic conclusion of events, but why not post that, instead of the communication pertaining to it?
If this site is to be taken seriously, if not by the management of HC and CS, then at least by its own readership, posters would do well to publish better documented threads than this one.
There were two conditions that didn’t allow me to write more: I don’t know that much more and I only had 2 spare minutes.
So here’s the background. I signed up for Hospitality Club in April 2004. I became highly critical of Veit around November 2005 and wrote some blog articles about the censorship and his tight control of the organization. I had actually expected to be removed in the beginning of 2006.
Typically enough, the last time I had tried to log into HC was at the BeWelcome unconference, one month ago. I only received 2 requests through HC in the last month (and tons through CS). So I don’t understand the sudden removal at all. I think Veit is just losing it.
I don’t really care about being removed. I had over a 100 positive comments, that have probably been erased as well. But the memory of those people is more important. And in fact, my removal might cause people to leave HC at a faster pace.
I think Daz already explained why this info fits on OpenCS.
I don’t see the problem. We should criticize Casey because, in spite of all his rhetoric that CS is a democracy, it is in fact run by him and his tiny clique. Veit, however, has always been very open about the fact that HC is directed by him exclusively.
As to the comment above expressing anger at Veit because he spent six months on a beach with his girlfriend, do you demand all private business owners redistribute their profits according to group demands instead of using it as they freely wish? HC is not meant to be a charity like CS.
@Christopher Culver: Hahaha. Let the controversial debate roll…
@Christopher
I don’t think Casey every said CS was a democracy. In fact, he is intentionally vague about what it really is: a company? a charity? volunteer run? run by “professionals”? Sometimes, it feels like he put a freshmen year management book, some kind of hippie manual and a rule book for a boys club in a blender and voila: a new management style is born! His financial model is equally weird and most likely illegal.
But, you are right that at least Veit is pretty straightforward in his bluntness. I, by the way, also think he’s losing it. (And strongly suspect he will read this thread
@ all
1.
I agree on the “loosing it”. This is not the usual censorship anymore, it seems like a desperate try to keep HC going (at least they think it’ll keep HC going).
Don’t forget that CS has far more members than HC since some time, although HC used to be the “Nr.1″ for quite some time. I really seems like they are afraid of “dying” / loosing importance; and to be honest, this whole thing happening is just one more proof for me for HC going into a doubtful future.
Another sign for this was that since a long time not much happened on HC; we can say a lot about CS, but at least the site keeps going&developing and sometimes new features come up.
HC was completely “still” and the growth had siginificantly slowed down and now suddenly this. As said, seems like one of the famous last desperate extreme actions.
2.
By the way, everybody goes about Veit did that (I don’t see a problem by the way about him using money from the google ads (different would be if I’d be money from donations!!) for vaccancy, if it is true. Because it was never a secret that he OWNS the website, so it’s fair enough he uses money from the google ads).
Well, he knew about it for sure. But how do you know “it was Veit”? How involved is Veit still in HC? If HC slowed down so much I have the feeling that it’s not only because of the now-BW volunteers who dropped out, but I also have the feeling Veit has less interest in HC these days. What is just a feeling from my side and anyway it would be fair enough.
But if Veit is having other priorities in his life now the question is who is behind the kicking out? Veit has his flaws in leading HC, but I somehow don’t see him kicking out people out of the blue. What about Babso? This is not supposed to be blaming towards Babso, as I don’t know him, but I heard strange stories about him.
How is the power structure of HC these days? Anyone?
3.
If there is somebody from HC inner circle (eg Veit) reads this, then it would be nice if you could tell us the official reasons.
Thanks, I missed that “out of the blue, I have no idea why and which recent actions/activities of mine could be connected to that”.
Regarding the HC/CS story. I think it is always good to see the present not as fact and keep the whole history in mind (e.g. http://www.hospitalityguide.net/hg/forum/ has some documentation).
Veit himself was actually the first one that pointed out that CS is ‘commercial’ and HC is not. He also said that he would use money from HC for his own purpose. The thing was that Casey was and is very open about this and it is possible to see the books, but Veit did and still does not allow that. Through not letting people talk about CS (e.g. censorship) he was loosing it. He was loosing even more — maybe this was actually the cause in the first place — as he made people belief (and still does) that HC peace community volunteer organisation (and most people do imply automatically a democratic structure into this). It took a really long time until he admitted openly (and he nearly sued Kasper for putting the email on the web) that he will always be the only person making decisions in HC.
It was and is, as with CS, all about NOT having a clear and transparent communication. Through this, people do get false hopes and expectations, what then, when not fulfilled, does cause frustration in many people. The thing is that people do belief in Hospitality Exchange — how can they do differently after the many positive experiences they had? — that they do not just turn away from this and go on with their life as nothing has happened.
I find it very sad to see that HC is now indeed deleting peoples profiles. There was, I think, a really long time the policy that NONE of the profiles can be deleted, only deactivated. It seems that Veit sees BeWelcome now as a even bigger threat then CouchSurfing in the past. Of course, that is true. Many people did not see Couchsurfing as a real alternative to Hospitalityclub, but he did lose many dedicated volunteers to BeWelcome and, as it seems now, he is loosing even more… I can not explain why he starts kicking out members otherwise. It is, of course, a shame that he plays the fear card. On the long run he will lose even more people with this. His active and skilled volunteers will get to know about this and surly they will not be intimidated. But actually he lost already over a year ago, have a look on Alexa (http://tinyurl.com/29rb9d).
I still do think that Veit knows really good what he does and what he wants to archive with HC, more then Casey with CS, and I bet he could, when there would not be his need for power… Lets hope that with the BoD in BeVolunteer/BeWelcome a Veitsey was born.
Not to forget: I do invite everybody who beliefs in the core ideas of hospitality exchange to develop Hospex Ne>t (www.hospitalityguide.net) further. There are several Hospitality Exchange Networks (or Home stay networks) and they all do have their goals and advantages, but also disadvantages. The aim of this site is not to rank the Networks, but to help interested people finding their way through the world of Hospitality Exchange (over one million people by now!), by presenting the Networks, tips, tricks and experiences. For Hospitality Exchange Networks veterans, this site offers an independent platform to talk about experiences, futures & safety, ideas & beliefs…
@adia
stop trying to plug your page in every second sentence!
Let’s not fight making things worse.
It’s a pity such bans occur. Even though I have been friends with Veit since many years I do not think his HC policy is so great either. I shall do some more comic on that.
Who’s veiting? What could be worse?
Could hospitality exchange websites be organized worse than they are now? There are two huge networks for hospitality exchange, with so much more potential than what is currently possible.
Also, this is not just a simple “ban”, it’s a deletion, a termination “to protect other members and our network.” This is just sick.
And it’s happening without any justification, and I’m not the first and surely not the last.
Instead, secretly I had hoped that Veit would give up some day and transfer “his” private network to BeWelcome.
So now it’s my turn to think about legal action. The legal basis of HC is extremely flaky and it might be possible to take it back into the hands of the members, or at least force Veit to create a better legal ground. I’ve already been kicked out, so I don’t have much to loose here. Anyone interested?
Bash.org Moderators Strike Over Lack Of Improvements
http://www.irc101.org/news.php?network=archive
“For over a year now, we have begged Ninety to allow us to help him, appealing to our common interest: the continued success of bash.org. These supplications have been met with hostility and scorn. It is important that we note that we still respect Ninety and appreciate all he has done for bash.org. What we object to is his seeming apathy regarding the site.”
Ninety isn’t happy with the striking moderators: he has since removed their moderation accounts.
Does this sound similar ?
@zak0r
any problem with that? does it disqualify what i say/said?
lets just summarize the key areas of social networks:
a) growth is usually achieved by having the early adopters with motivation and a brain active on your network, they will ensure their network being part of the system
b) the community will always be critical of everything because its impossible to make everyone happy, unhappy elements of the community will always try to enforce as much as they can
in regard to hc, veit has always trying to keep full information control over hc, he got shit for that by alot of senior users and volunteers whom at this point were mostly still conned by casey into believing that there is a better network out there. one has actually acknowledge that veit was very direct about his intentions since the splitoff in the post monnai scenario.this has allowed him to control the community through all means of information control and give no real exposure to critics, at a price that all the key volunteers left and not only development grinded to a halt, but also the social growth died off and practically, the site is shrinking fast.
casey has made the HUGE mistake of exposing himself legally on about all fronts. we have already seen a huge shift of early adopters and former key social network nodes towards bewelcome, but the growth that cs is able to achieve still outweights this by far. what we have seen since cs2 is an increasing attempt by casey and his bunch of mediocre buddies to control information, hide their wrongdoings and lies. we will see if they will be able to maintain growth with the exodus of key volunteers.
personally, i am convinced CS will go out and down like hc.
reason: real early adopters and cool people find out about the issues sooner or later and say fuck it. all that cs is left with, a tendency i am seeing more and more, is a bunch of unemployed no life hippie losers finding their refuge in “friendlyness” and getting drunk
@adia
you weaken your points with your weakly disguised pr, its not me who should have a problem with it but you yourself
Sigurdas, could you remind us again where to find the comics – unless of course you prefer not to make them public here? As I remember they were hilarious though a bit cryptic for someone not knowledgeable of HC internals
@ zak0r
Thanks, for telling me that. I will keep it in mind.
@ anu
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=hospitalityclub+comics
personally, i am convinced CS will go out and down like hc.
It will all depend on the network effect.
http://www.biocrawler.com/encyclopedia/Network_effect
The network effect causes a good or service to have a value to a potential customer dependent on the number of customers already owning that good or using that service. Metcalfe’s law states that the total value of a good or service that possesses a network effect is roughly proportional to the square of the number of customers already owning that good or using that service.
All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.
George Bernard Shaw
Well, when I am done with the #3 issue of the comic I will announce it on HC forum, BW, and perhaps here then, too.
In about 2 weeks, let’s say. So far, here is an excerpt:
http://a820.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/106/l_f3bf7be9dcbf751c9875929bd83066fb.jpg
I have seen this situation before and posted about that on the couchsurfing network.
http://www.couchsurfing.com/group_read.html?gid=10&post=487259
It seems that the normal Couchsurfing network is more open than the HC network.
As Veit is unable to delete posts there posting there reaches Veit without giving him the chance to delete your post.
Anyway what currently is going on in HC is Sad, so sad its a sad situation..
@Daz: Yes, it does sound familiar. You pointed out and incident with Bash.org where a small handful of volunteers didn’t like the way things were going and didn’t like how the website managers didn’t do exactly what they demanded of them. The article was four years old so now we have the benefit of history to look back on it. Bash.org leads the industry (in relation to the three other sites they quoted in that article as “gaining in popularity as a result”), possible “as a result” of failing to submit to the demands of people who either didn’t know better or just failed to see the bigger picture.
So yes, you’re right (especially since CouchSurfing continues to exponentially grow and lead the industry as well) – it sounds familiar.
See for yourself: http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/bash.org/bash.org/bash.org/bash.org?h=300&h=400&range=6m&site0=bash.org&site1=qdb.us&site2=qdbii.pyoko.org&site3=&site4=&size=Medium&w=610&w=700&y=r&z=3&z=3
ah look, someone who doesnt have the character to have an opinion and a name at the same time and who seems to be illusional of the cs growth.
dude, look at your own fucking graph, the alexa reach didnt change for 6 month. growth in cs is stagnating, the reasons are the same why hc ended up with shit growth: those people who made it work abandoned it, the wanna be cool kids just refuse to admit it that they dont have what it takes, nor do the yaysayers that were put in place as slaves now.
zak: “growth in cs is stagnating”
um, you might want to actually check your facts before spouting nonsense. couchsurfing has been tripling in growth since it began. if you actually cared about the truth (and not your own heavily biased and agenda-based nonsense) you could see for yourself <a href=”“>here and here.
also, look at that first graph i pointed out. it’s clear that they are the market leader of these sites who supposedly “gain[ed] in popularity as a result”.
it’s so fun correcting people who speak before they think! thanks for
the very easy diversion.
look at your own link, there has been no increase in reach for cs since last summer. understand statistics before deriving anything from it. maintaining reach in the literally exploding web2 context equals shrinking. if hospitalityclub, a webpage which significance is not shrinking but rather imploding, is the bar for cs to aim, you can however certainly call cs a success story.
also, how about getting some guts and being clearly identifyable? or are you afraid that i would violently communicate you how you fail in being?
Wow, i got credit for destroying brainstrom. Give credit where credit is due guys, and I am not where it’s due.
During five years of HC-membership I’ve been asked on occasion by volunteers of HC -once a common species- if I would not volunteer for the club. I am not doing it, and I do not regret it.
The freedom of travelling is more inspiring than volunteering for a hospitality network.
And it turns out that having an own and independt opinion within notably HC may work out against you.
For those who got kicked from HC -we know your names- I feel the pity that they cannot contact other HC-members anymore, how good in heart they may be.
Quick question. How many members join BeWelcome every week? Because it seems to have stuck between 2000 and 3000 for a long time now. You all claim that BeWelcome is the new Mecca for Hospitality Exchange, but after all the furor over people going there to abandon the other two networks it hasn’t actually gained that much. I am a member but see nothing changing there. I can’t even add my mother tongue as a language I speak there. I have asked to add Irish to the list on numerous occassions now.
@Spyro
1. BeWelcome is aiming for “slow growth” right now. There is no active campaigning, except mouth-to-mouth, and this is fine. We’ve never claimed members are going there on a large scale, but volunteers have “defected” on a large scale from both CS and HC. In the long run, this will make the biggest difference: experienced, mature and well educated volunteers.
2. Sorry to hear you’re having trouble with adding a language (isn’t it called Gaelic though? I didn’t know Irish was a language in itself). Good news is that there *is* a public bug tracker: http://www.bevolunteer.org/trac/
I warmly invite you to submit your problem and witness how things are done there.
No, the language is only called Gaelic By foreigners. The real name is Gaeilge. The name Irish people give it is Irish. Nobody from Ireland will call it Gaelic except those who have been away for so long and are over describing the difference between Irish and English as the difference between German and Slovak. Which I tell my students but I still refuse to call it Gaelic.
Anyway, before anyone might attack me, this post wasn’t meant as an attack, you guys seemed to be in the know about BW and I got annoyed about the language thing. I am a member of BW because I know everything has a time limit. Cs being one of them, because it is neither, time, tide, death nor taxes.
As I have told a lot of people, openly, I don’t see couchsurfing lasting forever. I don’t think it can last forever the way things are going, anymore than the rest of you. But, so long as CS is here and I can meet amazing people through it I will continue and I will volunteer my time to help. I gave up ambassadorship because there was way too much bickering and I felt I wasn’t contributing. I remained on the CUQ team as I like helping out surfers directly.
People continue to surf and host is CS which has always been the main function. None of this saving the world mission crap. So as long as that continues I will. I am registered in BW HC GFL for those reasons too but only use cs. Despite the downtimes it is still the most user friendly and the most reliable. So attack me if you will, but I was no reason for any downfall, I saw people complain cs had started its death two years ago when I joined and its still going.
I see CS now with over 400000 members and my idea of how its supposed to fuction is different from a lot of other people’s opinions. But I still have surfed and hosted over 100 times. So that is what makes me act as the Us, or the them, however you want to call me, in the Us vs them argument you claim to have. And I do not feel the brainstorm group worked in the way it was supposed to for a long time, so if i helped in ending the fighting, I am glad, but Don’t say I took part in creating a Dictatorship.
The End, I’m out, but I will read on a bit.
you’re the Us spyro
I didn’t think you had anything to do with the change in Brainstorm, SPyro.. and wasn’t sure where that came from either.
I think the real problem ever with Brainstorm the original was that it was the only group that acted as the Center place to discuss things. Of course that being the case, most complaints went there too! Despite many requests, no more central forum was ever installed; personally i think that would have been the correct solution to the BS (in all ways) issue.
Any large organization, not to mention from different cultures, needs a place to handle AND RESPOND TO issues, criticisms, conflicts on direction and so on. I see it as part of the serious lack of willingness to communicate, that there isn’t such a place. A ‘General Cafe’ group would be the place to go, usually, and people could see both the good and the bad there.
I know i and many others respect all those who have both benefited CS and are willing to give back. (I’ve done so but never in an official capacity.) Meaning you and all those other hard workers. I think what drives many who have concerns is exactly the fear and sadness that CS will NOT last, when it truly could, with proper management. At this point i’ve seen too many great ambs quit and not even be recognized or acknowledged, to think that your volunteering is as appreciated as it should be. so.. respect, bro! Thanks for hanging on there on CUQ – i thought you had to BE an amb, though, no?
overall, i prefer to be the We, neither Us nor Them. that’s the old way – but i think many have a difficult time understanding HOW to be ‘we’. It does require ‘agreement’ and that is difficult to get if there is zero communication.
Thanks for posting, Sypro. and do bug BW for er.. ‘Irish’.. but realize that they are addressing translations by number of speakers, unless they can find translators.. did you offer to help translate?
I’m sure they would be thrilled.
I don’t want to translate. I just want the option to be able to show on my profile that I speak Irish. I won’t translate, I was supposed to do that in Cs too but haven’t got the patience for it.
They also tried to make the politics and policies group for the discussions you wanted to give. But when only a handful of people went there, there were complaints of censorship, that they were moving them away from the real spot where everyone could hear them. Thing is, as was seen by nobody moving, not that many people actually cared for listening. So providing a different platform didn’t work.
You don’t have to be an amb to be on any team in CS. Just ask to be put on it. I had also put in enough time as an Amb that they trusted me not to leak peoples’s personal information.
@Spyro
Contrary to what might be your impression, I think it’s perfectly fine that you prefer to use and contribute to CS in the way that you do. Most of us also understand that the largest network is also the easiest to find couches with. Just keep an eye on BW and use it once in a blue monday. (Also, should CS go down again this summer, it’s always nice to have a backup.)
If you look at most of the issues brought up here, you’ll see they address several troublesome areas in CS:
- the collectives
- the organizational structure (the ambs system, the old-boys network)
- the legal framework
- the way finances are spent
Things we don’t seem to comment on here, which implies they are quite fine:
- the members
- the usability of the site (except the downtime perhaps)
- the hosting/traveling experience itself (Callum wrote the very first post about that recently, but it wasn’t that controversial)
It didnt work because the people who made that arbitrary decision were forum newbies who never really participated on the forum before and after (newbies like Donna and mandy )
Also they were splitting brainstorm with an ulterior motive. Hide the stuff from the other less experienced ambassadors/active users.
Donna failed as a moderators on all the groups she had moderated because she has NEVER moderated outside couchsurfing nor does she have the people skills to make a group productive.
Marcus never had any authority and never messed with the brainstorm that is why it drew so many people to the group. Then when picwick posted the finances (donnas cooking the books) .The groupies decided to remove all the posts so as to hide the truth.
You were never a active poster but guess you are a more active chatter. That is why the initial members of the redefined could not get the back the magic of the brainstorm as they were never forum users (donna,spyro,mandy ) ulf never was a moderator so he never had the skills of a moderators ,he was more a troll and spammer on the brainstorm (ideas shooting off in tangents /communication problems/klosh).Marcus too though a founder was never an active poster. And rules ,kill groups and couchsurfing!! Do a study of the dying groups of couchsurfing when you have time.
Very Interesting. I wonder what watergate leaks are there .
I meant people’s email addresses and their account information that currently is not available to people who are not members of the verification team anymore. I also meant things like, in the past when we reset people’s passwords we could choose a password for them. Now one is chosen automatically that we have no access to. No crazy info there. No watergate. I mean regular users, personal information. We don’t have access to member disputes anymore, but we used to be able to see that.
Thank you for the clarification Spyro.Appreciate it .
@Spyro
Thank you for providing us with a little more insight. There’s positive stuff in there.
No worries, I just didn’t like being attacked without precedent halfway through this blog without a chance to defend myself or even notification that I needed to defend myself.
“That is why the initial members of the redefined could not get the back the magic of the brainstorm as they were never forum users (donna,spyro,mandy )”
I may not have been an active forum user before CS but I have been an active human and I know that if you attack everything someone says. No matter what comes out of their mouths. If they agree with you and you choose to spin it around or if they disagree and you use it how you like, then they are going to stop replying. Simple as that. How long can you expect somoeone to take criticism without credit.
Constructive criticism is one thing. But only pointing out faults, often misrepresented ones at every given opportunity without a chance to say. Thank you for posting, what you said makes sense. I have one question on this but the rest was well clarified, thank you. As you have been doing now in this thread. That never happened in Brainstorm. There was no credit. There was continued criticism for every single word said.
I feel this is why Brainstorm fell apart. Everyone seemed to lose respect.
I thank you from the bottom of my Brainstorm scarred heart for being so civil in here. I started posting here expecting a mauling. I appreciate your listening to me and asking me straight questions. I feel this didn’t happen for too long in Brainstorm. I have always had a lot of respect for most of the people here and I have gotten a little back for a few others.