Trust metrics are techniques for predicting how much a certain user can be trusted by the other users.CouchSurfing doesn’t really have a prediction mechanism, but trust values are registered for every friendship link.
I never thought the denominators for the trust value made a lot of sense for the friendship links on CS (especially when translated, I don’t really know how to best translate “I somewhat trust this person” into my mother tongue). Still, there seems to be a definite trend of linearly (in time) decreasing trust on the Quality of Service page. It would be interesting to compare this to values from before and do a deeper analysis. The “average quality” doesn’t seem to be changing significantly on the other hand, maybe slightly going up? Possibly because it’s actually visible to the receiver.
Joe Edelman wrote the QoS code, and wrote to me:
Wow, that *is* interesting!
So the avg trust is calculated among introductions added in the last
week that are reported as due to CS and in-person. So it’s not because
of virtual users, and it’s not because CS is accelerating and includes
less pre-existing friends.The only confounding factor I can think of, is that it doesn’t take the
“date you met this person” field into account — a lot of people don’t
fill it out, or don’t fill it out correctly. So it includes
introductions that are finally being reported from the past, as well as
those that actually occurred that week.We could be seeing an ever-greater percentage of weirdos from the past.
You know, those random people that blew through a collective, and much
later are friending everyone. And the people they are friending hardly
remember them and so don’t trust them. This would be a result of social
graph “fill-in”, perhaps as a kind of recoil from expansion last summer.Or, perhaps it’s an accurate result, and as CS grows, people that meet
find they have less in common, since CS includes more demographics.In that case, it could be interpretted as a *positive* result: perhaps
the ideal would be to take people who DON’T trust each other INITIALLY,
and give them POSITIVE EXPERIENCES such that later they DO trust each
other, or they start to trust other people from a new demographic MORE.
Let’s just hope this trend does not continue. If it would, the average trust would be zero by the end of 2010.
In the meanwhile, some active work can be done on designing and implementing a trust system from scratch on BeWelcome.
The data:
year week introductions users quality trust 2008 16 6625 3890 1.526 0.370 2008 15 14238 7345 1.506 0.377 2008 14 14818 7591 1.490 0.379 2008 13 16520 8201 1.527 0.388 2008 12 13895 6952 1.500 0.387 2008 11 12252 6291 1.479 0.379 2008 10 12303 6490 1.493 0.392 2008 09 12796 6482 1.480 0.382 2008 08 11336 5875 1.483 0.376 2008 07 12484 6408 1.486 0.391 2008 06 11778 6215 1.469 0.409 2008 05 11201 5945 1.453 0.406 2008 04 10570 5998 1.479 0.415 2008 03 10757 5983 1.489 0.410 2008 02 9560 4872 1.503 0.410 2008 01 13972 6425 1.484 0.417 2007 52 7749 4279 1.476 0.414 2007 51 9332 5118 1.467 0.421 2007 50 10975 5500 1.480 0.422 2007 49 10309 5632 1.454 0.415 2007 48 10664 5500 1.454 0.413 2007 47 10335 5734 1.487 0.425 2007 46 10835 5762 1.492 0.429
Joe supposedly writes “In that case, it could be interpretted as a *positive* result: perhaps the ideal would be to take people who DON’T trust each other INITIALLY, and give them POSITIVE EXPERIENCES such that later they DO trust each other, or they start to trust other people from a new demographic MORE.”
Kasper follows with “Let’s just hope this trend does not continue.”
Yes, let’s hope that positive experience and an increase in trust does not grow in a place it didn’t exist before. What a horrible world that would be!
Also, the page you’re getting your facts from is obviously either being worked on right now or broken. Right at about the point where you cite the decline in trust is where there were supposedly zero members counted online. I see that you happened to have omitted that from your copy/paste job. I know it doesn’t completely support your case to include that or admit that something might be wrong with the rest of the page but in the spirit on the transparency that you claim to stand behind I’m just letting the rest of your audience know.
Flame away, OCS.
The trend is that average trust is decreasing. If it keeps decreasing the network.
The missing numbers don’t seem to be influencing the average trust. Here’s the complete info I got, in the spirit of transparency:
year week users online virtuality introductions users
avg quality avg trust ΔNOC
2008 16 100.0% 6625 3890 1.526 0.370 70.7
2008 15 100.0% 14238 7345 1.506 0.377 131.7
2008 14 100.0% 14818 7591 1.490 0.379 134.6
2008 13 100.0% 16520 8201 1.527 0.388 149.0
2008 12 100.0% 13895 6952 1.500 0.387 124.2
2008 11 0 100.0% 12252 6291 1.479 0.379 110.7
2008 10 0 100.0% 12303 6490 1.493 0.392 115.3
2008 09 21397 69.7% 12796 6482 1.480 0.382 82.3
2008 08 67931 91.4% 11336 5875 1.483 0.376 2.6
2008 07 68544 90.7% 12484 6408 1.486 0.391 11.3
2008 06 68595 90.9% 11778 6215 1.469 0.409 6.6
2008 05 67239 91.2% 11201 5945 1.453 0.406 2.8
2008 04 66045 90.9% 10570 5998 1.479 0.415 7.3
2008 03 68639 91.3% 10757 5983 1.489 0.410 3.9
2008 02 30366 84.0% 9560 4872 1.503 0.410 42.0
2008 01 0 100.0% 13972 6425 1.484 0.417 113.5
2007 52 52884 91.9% 7749 4279 1.476 0.414 -3.5
2007 51 56283 90.9% 9332 5118 1.467 0.421 5.6
2007 50 59204 90.7% 10975 5500 1.480 0.422 8.8
2007 49 57732 90.2% 10309 5632 1.454 0.415 11.6
2007 48 58492 90.6% 10664 5500 1.454 0.413 8.2
2007 47 58283 90.2% 10335 5734 1.487 0.425 14.7
2007 46 56690 89.8% 10835 5762 1.492 0.429 18.0
Quality of Service
Oops! This page is not working properly. A bug report has been filed with our tech team and we expect to have this page available again as soon as the kinks are worked out. In the meantime you can check out the links above for more related info!
Hmm… the page is not available anymore (also no links from ‘mission statistics’ and ‘regional stats’). Was the page taken offline? Some time ago the amount/percentage of ‘negative’ experiences was stated on ‘mission statistics’ too, but as they increased, they have been removed from the page…
I guess it could have been better to wait with posting this. Pretty sad it’s taken offline now.
Well, at least CS proved once again who they really are – hiding the “inconvenient truth” as soon as it’s uncovered – surely something for the still-believing but doubtful ambassadors and the like to see and learn from…
BTW hi to whomsoever of the inner circle observing this blog, thanks for outing yourselves once again.