Author Archive for midsch

Quo vadis hospex?

Published by midsch on October 25, 2008 in General Info, Open Source, Participation, Proactive Action and networks. 6 Comments

Short and cynical comments on some could-be-existing networks:

  • * Caseysurfing.com – Easygoing consumerfriendly network run by a bunchfull of burning men buddies with no strategy for the future at all. As they eat up an amazing amount of donations and the market for virtual social networks collapses with the international cashflow a simple sellout isn’t an option anymore. When the fun is over, I won’t share the hangover.
  • * Veitclub.org – The google-ad homebase of a single men gathering people who don’t mind censorship in communication. If the communication system is working at all. Estimated 2 years behind reality. Hard to signup for newbies and without technical improvements a living dead.
  • * Senil.org – Surviving from the stoneage of postwar hospitality exchange still not yet at home in the digital age but muddling through anyway.
  • * BeBehind.org – Some core volunteers still suffer from restrictive mindsets (courtesy of Veitclub.org), so progress in really opening up the network is small. Restrictions are still restrictions even if the code is GPL. The open source rebuilt of a common hospex-software is probably to slow to really suffer in the decline of big hospexnetworks, but may offer some software for other experiments (still a shitload of work).

Short but nevertheless also cynical theses for the future of hospex:

The hospitality exchange scene is and always was diverse. This won’t change, no, in the future the number of networks will probably rise and the importance of each one for the whole scene will shrink. I see two main future options / possibilities:

  • * Hospex as a gadget/plugin in other (commercial) networks like f**kbook, MyShit, soon T-Couch, iHospex, MacSleep, Sleepbucks and others – nothing I’d really care for, but something that would definetly keep some idiots out of things I like. There’s nothing wrong with it, but please leave me alone.
  • * Hospexnetworks with very specialized communities like gay boyscouts, polite gamblers, frustrated florists … A disadvantage of this kind of networks is the absence of bigger diffences within them, as there is always a common interest / category. So somehow it’s a bit limiting and cultural exchange simply fails with out differences. A solution could be megasearches between open parts of these networks, profile transfers and easy access. Besides smelling like violating privacy all over the place, it’s all theory right now.

And why this ranting?

I’ve spent and still spend some of my free time to volunteer for hospex networks, but from time to time it’s good to reconsider engagement. Right now it feels like being stucked between something halfdead, that is still working from an user-only point of view, and a luck of ideas/projects to improve/develop things.

So maybe it’s time to look for something useful to do in other areas?

Security through lies

Published by midsch on March 21, 2008 in 501c3, Casey Fenton, Censorship, Corpganization, Transparency and couchsurfing. 1 Comment

Most readers here know that the famous MDST (Member Dementing & Sensorship Team) deletes threads for “security reasons”. No, there are no security problems at CS. Never heard about thieves, molesters and similar stuff. Of course it’s a stupid way to “clean” the community, but at least it helps to sell out the company if the application for “non-profit”/”charity”-stuff in New Hampshire fails. (Or Casey just get bored of CS.) But that’s not the issue here.

Yesterday the news at CS announces:

Buggin’ Out!

Fixes to the “location bug” brings back functionality better than ever!
20. March 2008 Once again, the shining stars on our tech team have successfully tackled an error in the system to get things back to normal on the site for you.

You may have noticed the site was offline for a short while today. This downtime was scheduled so the tech team could fix the recent issues experienced with correctly reflecting members’ locations.

Check out what features are back for you!

* Nearby travelers on members’ home page will now actually be nearby!
* When you search for a couch in a city, you can now effectively search for members within a chosen radius of that city. Let’s say you want to CouchSurf in Gdansk, Poland but there are only a handful of CouchSurfers there. You can once again search for a couch within, say, 20 km of Gdansk. Hurray!
* Location map on member’s profiles will reflect the correct location. Members will no longer randomly be placed in Africa… unless you live in Africa!
* Recent member login location will reflect correct location as accurately as possible. (Click here for information on why it may not always be right) If you were logged in during the downtime, you may need to log out and log back in to show the proper location.

A round of applause for the tech team volunteers- job well done!

First of all: Great, they finally not only do something with the code they also announce it. I’ve also noticed, some minor bug fixes have been done (months after reporting) and some small improvement are online, most of them asked for again and again in the last years. But nothing really impressing. And here the good news already stop.

So let’s “check out what features are back” for us: All the four points mentioned in the news are based on one single topic: IP adresses and their localisation. As even CS explains at the linked page it’s not accurate. There are several reasons for that, like wrong settings from your ISP, using of company firewalls etc. This caused a lot of CUQs and cockroach posts when I was doing this kind of stuff. And it’s simply not to fix, the whole idea is a mistake.

If it works properly IP localisation is a serious threat against privacy. Your company sees where and when you login (during work time? from somewhere else when you call in sick?), so you may loose your job. Your stalking Ex is able to track you. At some places the nearby couchsurfer feature is widely used to annoy females with inapprobiate mails. Exact localisation while travelling is a useful information for criminals interested in your unguarded flat (this is especially useful if you’ve got a verified adress and CS places the the google marker in search exactly at your home).

But the main point is: IPs can easy be faked/changed. There are several services in the internet who offer anonymous access to webpages, there is software like Tor to hide your IP and makes it very, very difficult to trace you. At the moment CS tries very hard to block IPs from those services/networks but it’s a ridiculous attempt and doesn’t work if you accept some reloads while using the software. If someone does the work to setup a profile for abusing CS, hiding the real IP is no big deal. And still CS calls this a security feature. As at least the techno crowd must know that’s not true, so insisting on IP-Localisation as security feature must be called what it is: a lie.

When you know an organisation is lying to you about a serious issue, how trustworthy it is at all?

PS – There is a lot to do about security at CS:
- encrypted login (SSL), especially because a lot of couchsurfers use the page from unsecure, public computers/connections while travelling
- really delete information, not only hide it (mails, profiles, …) but don’t hide useful information (profiles from thieves)
- don’t say it’s privacy VERSUS security,  it’s privacy AND security

Short announcement about a long non-written post

Published by midsch on February 26, 2008 in Uncategorized. 10 Comments

After the interesting post about “non-violent communication” (and the following discussion), I had another post in mind about the last CSC newsletter titled “Half a million members and only one single voice?”. Guess what? I’ve taken my time to dig into some other stuff and prepare the results to donate it as my voluntary work somewhere else.

Recently I stumbled over a CS profile where the box “How I Participate in CS2″ was filled with:

I help the project by directing everyone I meet to www.bewelcome.org

Sorry for wasting your time.

Why I don’t take part in the survey …

Published by midsch on September 18, 2007 in CouchSurfing Wiki, Finances, Jim Stone, Leadership Circle, Participation, Transparency and couchsurfing. 4 Comments

There is this fancy survey, where we can choose some questions, which will be presented to the Leadership Circle. Maybe they even answer to it. I don’t count on it. And I don’t want even think about it, but as this posting shows: I failt. But:

  • Why limit the number of questions at all?
  • A leadership circle of 13 people plus 3 paid employees plus tons of volunteers should be able to answer 10times so many questions.
  • Some of the answers should have been published anyway (yes, without being asked).
  • While the most of the Leadership Circle plays “dead man”, Jim gets paid to spent time for complaining about not having time, blocking people from the wiki and developing the cs-haters conspiracy theory. I guess, simply answering questions would need less time.
  • Statistics? wouldn’t be the first time someone lies about numbers at cs (funny enough: Mikky says so). So even if there is a reaction it would be easy to call it a minority issue. (In my opinion some of the questions really are, but that’s not a reason not to answer them.)

It’s not a matter of choosing the right questions or limiting them to a smaller number. Or presenting them from a Survey. Again it’s a matter of the Leadersship Circle’s will to communicate with the users and if they want to make their work transparent (or at least visible).

To me the survey is completely ridiculous.

Rewriting history – Replacing “us vs. them” with “those, who hate CS”?

Published by midsch on August 21, 2007 in General Info and Leadership Circle. 8 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

When the OpenCS campaigns were published, the Leadership Circle had to face the fact, that ignorance wasn’t working this time. While some “followers of the true Couchsurfing spirit” (i. e. Mikky, Donna, Naz) were doing the dirt work of insulting the main protagonist of OpenCS in public, the Leadership Circle constructed an “us vs. them” legend, give some marketing bloats to the users and tried to avoid every real communication. The result was the resign of many volunteers. Surprisingly more than the Leadership Circle expected.

OpenCS became a lost cause and as a result the campaigners themselves failt to fullfill their own requirements. It was never meant as a clear frontline against someone, but more or less the “discussions” end up in the “us vs. them” logic. The Leadership Circle strategy of keeping more or less quiet and as a result lacking a place for a discussion makes it worse: users at brainstorm began to feel annoyed about the same issues again and again in nearly every thread. In the meantime, forced by deeply personal disappointments, injuries and feeling betrayed, the reference war started. But leaving each other negative references not only symbolized the edge between “us” and “them” very well, it was also bad PR for OpenCS at all, even if the Leadership Circle answered in the same way (and Casey himself started to remove friendlinks).

Then things began to change again: Kasper – listening to the advice of others – made the brave step to remove the bad references (something I could not appreciate enough). This – supported by some apologies – changed the situation at brainstorm a bit. Additionally some new people at brainstorm have begun to ask questions. With the same result as ever: not much answers, even if this is from time to time hidden behind a lot of words. But the tone is different this time:
no more “us vs. them”, what means at least a form of dispute, no, now some people are adressed as “those few who hate CS”.

Who is that? A small group planning to destroy CS out of pure hate against CS as such? More conspiracy theories, please! Do I hate CS? Don’t expect me to answer this question, but maybe I should create a group “those who _really_ hate CS” (no worries: I won’t do it really. Like the “Goovy is an arsehole and we know it”-group). Seems all in all more a reason to laugh out loud than to worry. But the problem is: The Leadership is rewriting history here. If there are no answers or alternatives, the ideas of OpenCS will disappear more or less completely. The “usual supects” will end up as couchterrorists, who tried to destroy the happyhappy couchsurfing family, but failed thanks to the good and visionary leaders.

I claim the right of my own history. Remember, this is the digital age: history written on paper rolls by winners only is history itself.

PS: Didn’t I mention “The little leninist’s cookbook” before? One very important task is to define the own opinion as a majority and every critics as a small minority. Don’t worry about real numbers, it’s just important to say so. A perfect historical example about this can be found with the keywords Menshevik (from russian the Russian word for minority) and Bolshevik (from russian the Russian word for majority).
PPS: Nonviolent communication is not a good concept for people who don’t understand (or don’t want to understand) that non-communication is probably one of the most violent forms of communication at all.

German article about Hospitality 2.0

Published by midsch on August 17, 2007 in General Info. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

For your interest: There is an arcticle about Couchsurfing in a German online magazin called Telepolis under the headline “Gastfreundschaft 2.0” (= “Hospitality 2.0″ – german only). I’ll try to summarize/translate some main points here. The article’s intention is more or less critical in a non-conventional way. So maybe there is something to learn out of it.

The author quotes the still not changed CS-Mission “Creating a better world” and starts with the following questions:

  • Is CS a globalization from the bottom, realising a cometogether of people solidly united from all over the world far beyond the leadership of profits?
  • Or is this all leading to a point where 270.000 people under the Couchsurfing logo will wake up with a hangover and have to realize that the party is over and they’re trained to be clients of another World Commerce Corporation?

After a general description of couchsurfing with some examples the author raises concerns, that a network like this is not spreading the idea of hospitality at all. On the one hand side the sophisticated criterias for searching and detailled profiles will bring only similar people to meet with eachother, excluding different people as a potential risk or at least too different. On the other hand side the networks could kill traditional hospitality, by replacing it with a technical solution or even worse simply with business models.

The author calls the CS Terms of Use a loud ticking bomb for everyone who is not deafening hisself because of enthusiasm about the idea. He recommend reading it and says he hasn’t read very often texts repeating in every thinkable detail the same thing: “We (the company) are allowed to do everything, you (the users) are not allowed to anything.”

A last quote (in bad translation):

“The thought, who obtrude the fan, the idea for this creepy conditions don’t suit the idea or the spirit of the community and are not invented from the founder of the CS-project, but from some mean consultants who talked him into it, should not calm down anyone: Very soon this kind of consultants will force him on selling to the highest bid. I for one haven’t found anything in the conditions, that would make such a buy-out difficult.”

My conclusion: Forget about CS corporation. Let’s save the idea. Which includes to think about the danger of creating networks connecting only similar people. Curiousity and openess has to be redefined and eked out everyday, that’s not a task for machines. At least if you want something else than clones of yourself.

Good night.

CouchSurfing 2.0 is dead

Published by midsch on July 20, 2007 in Crash 2.0 and Participation. 7 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

An appropriate system for a hospitality exchange network will not rise from the ashes of CS 2.0: Today the Newsletter Wanderlust was published, announcing the expansion of hired manpower. I guess, it’s not wrong to call it CS 3.0, the short blossom of CS 2.0 and the chance to open the whole network is over.

We have to face the fact: CS is a company and simply can do what it does. We are “only” users of a (so far free) service offered by a company, not members of an open network. There is no such thing like participation in CS and in consequence the field “How I Participate in CS2″ on the profile pages should be ditched. Also the mission should be changed to:

“Donate for Creating a Bigger Corporation, One Job at a Time!”

Things left we can do:

- hosting/surfing/meeting
- don’t forget about all the nice experiences
- demask attempts by CS to call a top-to-down structure a place of
participation
- being aware of the fact that most couchsurfer simply don’t care
- looking for / creating projects with an appropriate form of structure
- don’t get frustrated

Her mit den Abenteuern! (German for something like “Gimme adventures!”)