Quite interesting, my first Ghanese spammer. And the proof why registration for Couchsurfing doesn’t work:
Too bad that CS doesn’t use SpamAssassin. But what about the profile (https://www.couchsurfing.org/profile.html?id=BFUS6VU)
Why is a African person being able to “have a secure profile”, while everything is against him? Another proof that registration and sponsoring CS doesn’t make the system safer?
(Needless to say: I spammed the account…)
Have a great – and safe! – 2010!
Seems that Couchsurfing is down: http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/couchsurfing.com
I’m wondering whether we get a update on what happened….
Too bad… http://www.couchsurfing.org/group_read.html?gid=2125&post=4446530
===
Hey team,
I’m resigning as a CS Amb.
This hasn’t been an easy decision. Firstly, I really like the people on the LT/AST – how can’t I? They dedicate all their time to a project I deeply love. And this project has introduced me to people who have changed the direction of my life for the better and made me a better person.
But I have realized lately that I’m not an ambassador for CouchSurfing.org but rather an ambassador for hospitality, transparency, communication, fairness, radical inclusion and living life. CouchSurfing for me represented a collective of people who believed in that. People who believed in respect and equal rights and honour and integrity. People who wanted to make positive change in the world and have fun at the same time. I didn’t just want to be a member using a service, I wanted to participate on THAT team.
I don’t believe anymore that CouchSurfing is that nor can it ever be that organization that I dreamt it would. The specific incidents are just symptoms. From the mass exodus of the Tech Team in 2007 to the mass exodus of the Global Ambs this year, we have not learnt from our mistakes. And we are all to blame. From the Ambs who basically say “don’t worry be happy” to the Brainstormers who are bitter and twisted, and everyone in between. We have failed.
I suspect that some of you are like me. Hoping to stay on as a CS Amb so that you can change things “from the inside”. However, I realize now that this is all futile. All I’m doing is being a complicit representative to actions that are against my very nature.
For better or worse, CS is the best hospitality exchange we have right now. I will continue to promote the philosophy of hospitality exchange as a member but I can no longer in good conscience, continue representing this organization as an “ambassador”. All I can hope for is something better comes along before it’s too late.
love
Roy
Remember: All our actions either bring more light or more darkness into the world.
Thomas and I saw this coming: the “Moval” of the resignation of Brian. In short:
You could see that coming. But in the post itself Chiara Gandolfi asks:
It might be me, but as of now I fail to find it in Ambassadors Private…
Can we have the link? Thanks
Since Chiara is a City Ambassador, I guess that she should be able to check the Ambassadors Private. Nothing there though? Gadget says later on (in another censorship) the post “Probably still is in transit” and “The post is moved. Check the guidelines for the group”…
I wrote earlier at this blog that development at Couchsurfing isn’t the most stable part of the network. Today, lack of communication, as well as a simple programming error made a well respected member of the community leave. This can be read at a post by Thomas, as well as on the original source.
What really amazed me was the reason of the leave: a programming error, and not one, but one of many. I quote:
Another issue that was concerning me were bugs with simple fixes. Europeans consistently use commas to separate dollars and cents. However, many transactions were processed incorrectly, due to the comma. A member would attempt to donate 21,50, and 2,150 would be charged. Then it’s up to the member to notice the error, since we did not mail out receipts. I attempted and notified the LT that we should fix this ASAP, but it didn’t take top priority.
To be honest, I do not fully agree with Thomas stating that this is a scam, but I’m surely interested whether all the money is payed back as it should be. The programming error also makes clear that the creditcard-payments are handled at couchsurfing.com itself, instead of a payment broker. I’m not very clear if I would be glad to be a verified member…
Found at http://www.couchsurfing.org/careers_openings.html#Gardener_/_Landscaper:
Gardener / Landscaper
Purpose:
Responsibilities:
Requirements:
I’m wondering what happened with me that I am actually writing an article on Opencouchsurfing.org. Reason for this wondering is that I wish the users, AND OWNERS the best of Couchsurfing.com.
MySQL and OTAP
Unfortunately, this seems not to be the case. In my short time as System Administrator at Couchsurfing, I’ve seem it happening more than often that the website was suddenly down. In 99% of the cases there was a change in the code, causing the downtime of one part (or even worse: the whole website). The second cause was MySQL, which just is crappy with the setup of Couchsurfing. In this case, the NDA caused good people to leave.
Downtime
Lately, I’ve heared more moaning of the website being suddenly down. From my place (Rotterdam, The Netherlands), nothing seems to be wrong. Until lately. My mailbox is lately flooded of the loadbalancers that Couchsurfing use, and are no longer accepting connections. With the processing-power that couchsurfing does have (more than 7 webservers *AT LEAST!*), several database-servers, I unfortunately must conclude that the only reason why couchsurfing currently *FAILS* is the IT-management team of couchsurfing, especially the development-team.
Development-team
So, can we conclude that the development-team fails? Unfortunately, this question must be answered as a no. Unfortunately, because otherwise the Couchsurfing Corpganization would be able to ditch the programmers, and get new, well payed, other guys willing to work their asses off.
The problem is deeper: CS is build in a iterative way: once build by Casey, extended by several guys. Unfortunately, the CS-MT is unable to get a firm grasp at the whole, is not willing to make it open-source, and is not able to program it the right way.
OTAP
Even worse, the management has desided that *THE WAY* to program couchsurfing is to have several programmers in several timezones, programming at different (or the same?) things at the same time. In development-land (for what I have heard), a socalled OTAP-Street (Ontwikkeling, Testen, Acceptatie, Productie), meaning a line of Development, Testing, Acceptation and production, is *THE* way to develop things. I must say that I have said this several times to Casey and Weston and they claimed “it was to difficult”. With that decision they also chose a method that gave the following results:
Now, would this above error be there when a decent method of development had been chosen? I sincerely doubt it.
Money
This makes me conclude that Couchsurfing is *DEAD*. Yes, indeed, I must say this with pain in my heart, the current way CS works (ignoring willing programmers, DBA’s etc) is not the way CS will reach the 2 million people (?) they wish to reach. I sincerely hope that BeWelcome.org will not have the same problem.
Conclusion
Walter said it right: 1 million (?) people can’t be ignored. From my stance, we will have a favour of people applying for our couch via BeWelcome. I must conclude that my eyes are (unfortunately) opened. And that my English is worse than that I have hoped 
Damn Kasper, how do you do those quotes?
Thanks 
For your information: this is an extract of the original post by Kasper (http://www.opencouchsurfing.org/2008/01/14/ill-communication/)
Thomas said:
It would be nice if Diederik could speak up about his experience and his own evaluation of the CS organisation.
@Diederik
A (small) word of warning: Speaking out against CS will almost automatically get you lumped in with the “OCSers”, even if you specifically state that you aren’t.
Well, to be honest, I probably already am. Some months ago, I had some posts, also on my own website. Seems that the communication went dead afterwards.
Let’s start at the beginning. I think this gives a better insight in my current feelings towards the Techteam, and in general: the leader of it, and Casey (ok, here comes my ban…)
My CS experience started at my former employer. Walter was a programmer then. I and Walter could (and still can) get along quite well, and I was invited in his house.
There were several great people, which had the same “frequency” (another word of saying we could get along, but that sentence would became corny ). I met Duke, Aldo, Tiina, Paul and some others I forgot due to the use of ethanol My current position then was system engineer, and I was asked for that position at couchsurfing.
That would become handy, because of the start of the Rotterdam Tech Collective. Some several others were there too. Anu* (love!), Weston, Naz (great friend), Chris where several of them.
I got introduced with Nicco and we had great chats about the code (I’m not a programmer, so having some insight is perfect for me), system engineering, the couchsurfing system etc, etc. At that time, there were several things an issue. Nicco and I (as the only admins, besides some Indian people) started to work.
We had an agenda, and could start.
Several issues were addressed quite quick. Most of them are not-to-be-disclosed, but several were visible from the outside:
That time, the collective was already 3 months (or something like that) in the past. Several people came to become “sysadmin”, Nicco was degraded as leader, while Weston became TT-Leader (managing dev and sysadmin). Communication became less and less. From some times, we couldn’t reach Casey, which was our first contact for the code. At that time, my irritation began (my irritation towards the OCS was already there ). Could some parts from OCS be *INDEED* true?
(Anu isn’t really stupid, you know, and Daz is just Daz and should drop dead, etc etc ) At that time, it seemed to *ME* that some people were only busy programming, and not with management.
We had a great CSInterklaas weekend, and the Thai-collective started. We had several “incidents” before and after that (not-to-be-disclosed), and my irritation was at top. When I decided to resign (1 week ago) at the same time the poweroutage at the datacenter happened. Bad timing… Or probably not, because there were some more “incidents”.
This morning, I pulled the plugs from cs-sysadmins, cs-erc, cs-devel(|public). At my desktop is a Freemind scheme (http://freemind.sourceforge.net, go get it) with my thoughts, idea’s and remedies. I had the idea to post it in the CS-Sysadmin group for learning. If only someone would not only *READ* it, but also *REPLY* to it. Therefor, I decided not to do so. I have the feeling that I’m being ignored, so why should I put more energy in it?
From my opinion (an censored version of the mindmap):
Let’s end with some positive notes:
I guess that the post shuld be called “Casey Love”, the feeling that you were loved, but the other end just decides to move on to the next one.
Love from Rotterdam!
Diederik (And Frank Sinatra… “The best is yet to come”)
p.s. When resigning from cs-sysadmins this morning, I saw the description of the group. Guess that this one is not NDA bound:
“Description: This group is free from political agendas and personal ideologies. It is a place to serve the one of the core needs(server administration) of the CS Organization in order to make sure that the members have access to the site at all times so that they can experience inter cultural understanding.”
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