CouchSurfing International Inc is now a for-profit business. It’s a shame, it had such incredible potential to become a truly democratic, inclusive, open platform. But it’s not. It’s a venture capital funded business. We all know how it got there, but that’s where it is. The dreams of an open and free CouchSurfing are now dead.

Let’s recognise that and move on with our lives. BeWelcome is the only viable alternative. So I say we archive the OpenCS site with a message telling freedom lovers to visit BeWelcome for open-source, democratic hospitality exchange.

In the spirit of do-ocracy, I will action this after 1 March unless I hear strong objections before then. That gives us a month to say our goodbyes, write our memoirs, and so on.

CouchSurfing has always been, and is now honest about being, a corporation.

And if not for cash, then surely for the added marketing value (worth real money, and lots of it), to allow Google and every other web site and search engine to add what you thought you were sharing with only fellow CS-members, to their fully public, permanent record that is the global internet.

All the personal trip and traveler feedback you thought you were sharing only with other CS members? Sorry, surprise, now everything you posted on CS is part of the public record, forever. And, perfectly searchable.

I realize Casey’s announcement(s) have mostly to do with Groups posts, but isn’t he trying to put into place the exact same kind of exposure and sale of all your information, including your profile? Your profile picture? Isn’t he playing the exact same kind of despicable game that Zuckerberg plays?

Make no mistake about what Casey is attempting to do, exactly like Zuckerberg/Facebook – blatantly deceive you, to gain your trust and persuade you to add to his mountainous pile of traveler feedback, then once he has your trust (and your posts and personal information) he sells everyone’s posted information to enrich himself, personally.

This has been his goal since the inception of the entire CS project, he just didn’t have any buyers yet. Until now. Until Facebook became the story to copy. Until he invested considerable effort in building the largest list of users he could accumulate, to ensure the biggest pay-day he could arrange for himself.

I’ve noticed that despite several fundamental issues which members have complained about for literally years, that are never even acknowledged… in all this time, the most visible efforts seen from the inner circle and their hiring decisions, seemed to always be about PR (public relations), suppressing the publication of complaints, outright denial of reality, and spreading the gospel. To grow the list of users. To fatten the calf before the slaughter.

In classic Cult-of-Casey style, he sells you out without a warning or your consent, but when the backlash proves substantial and it turns out that people don’t want any part of what Casey’s selling, he tries to spin his scheme as something that he only intended in the best of ways, something to help you!

I don’t know which kind of people I despise more strongly – users, or liars. Let alone a career scam-artist highly skilled in both exploiting and lying to people. But the recent investors want the maximum return on their investment, so just as others have predicted… let the sale (of information you donated in good faith) begin!
 
 
Fresh email from HQ, just received, sent to all CS “members.” Stare into the face of pure exploitation and bald-faced lies:
 
 

“We’ve heard you: Change to plans regarding groups”
 
Dear CouchSurfers,

Last week, we sent an email in which we announced our plan to make CS groups available to search. We made this decision because the team had received member complaints that some newer members of the site didn’t seem to be joining for the right reasons. We thought that allowing people to see more of what CS is about before they join might help address this problem.

The members disagreed! We’ve heard from hundreds of people who are very opposed to this approach. I’m very sorry to have caused so much distress. It’s clear that this is something that members care deeply about, and I respect the need to approach it differently.

We have made two major changes to our plan:

Group posts created in the past will not be available to search. The only posts that will be visible to search engines will be those created after February 15, 2012. This will protect the privacy of any members who no longer use the site and may not be aware of the changes.

All members will have the option to keep all of their posts hidden from search and from non-members. Just as we currently allow you to keep your profile hidden from anyone who is not logged in, we are now building another privacy option that will allow you to easily specify that your group posts should not be visible to search engines or people who are not logged in. This privacy option will apply to all of your posts, both past and future.

These two factors combined mean that the only posts that will be visible to search will be those made in the future by people who choose not to make their participation in groups private.

I sincerely hope that this approach will protect the privacy needs of all CouchSurfing members while also giving people who are considering joining CS an accurate impression of who we are – a community, not a place to find a free place to crash.

If you still have concerns about this, I invite you to email me at casey.fenton@couchsurfing.org and share your thoughts. The team makes all of its decisions with the intention of making CS better for its members. It seems that this time the change we wanted to make would actually have made it worse, and for that I’m sincerely sorry. I’m glad that you responded with your concerns: your reactions helped us see various sides of the issue that we had not considered. I know that CS groups are considered to be a safe and comfortable place to express yourself fully, and I would never want that to change.

Thank you for your patience and for your passion,

Casey Fenton
Co-Founder, CouchSurfing International

Interestingly, I haven’t see any spam from the nonsense accounts. They might be used in case a privilege escalation security issue is found in WordPress, so best to remove / block them I think. If anyone has any trouble registering, please post a comment here (you can do that without registering) and myself or another admin will create an account for you.

If you want to revert the changes I have made or have any other feedback, please let me know.

Hospitality Club and Airbnb have partnered to support one another in our shared vision to bring people together. We are very excited about this partnership since it allows us as a community to further spread the idea of hospitality exchange and at the same time raise much-needed funds by doing something we love anyway – hosting!

Read more at http://airbnb.hospitalityclub.org/

Daniel Hoffer announces he will not let annoying advertising

AirBNB.com does the same thing, but seven years earlier version and solidarity. CouchSurfing connects travelers seeking shelter in the world, even in Antarctica, with people willing to cede free. The site was created in San Francisco by Casey Fenton in 2003. Since then he has collected three million Internet users in 230 countries and borrowed couches and beds in 60,000 cities.

Around the World in 30 sofas

Private investors have pumped 5.5 million euros in the company

CouchSurfing is also a symbol of Internet collaborative Wikipedia-style: a non-profit or volunteer to write code to translate the content, is in 31 languages, which also receives donations. In 2009, for example, got $ 1.1 million (780,000 euros).

We no longer accept. CouchSurfing has changed its legal status “nonprofit” to business. It has also achieved $ 7.6 million (5.4 million) from private investors. Including Pierre Omidyar, eBay creative philanthropist, and Matt Cohler, Facebook and LinkedIn ex.

The changes have led to recriminations between the community of CouchSurfers, 28 years on average, they have managed to spend the night over his face in a strange house 3.6 million times in this time. They fear the free couch to go to hell, but rather that the database service is sold to third parties.

Daniel Hoffer, CEO of the company since January, denied in a telephone interview that the site will change their “social mission”. The problem, he argues, is that the Government of New Hampshire have been denied the status of “temporary” NGOs. “What we have asked from the beginning, since 2003.” The legal battle with including appeals, has taken seven years. “We lost. The U.S. government has tightened the conditions for non-profit company, they seek money as” jokes Hoffer.

The situation, he says, has left them broke. “Not only have we paid big bucks for lawyers, also a million dollars to the State of New Hampshire, and so we come to for funding.”

It also supports the manager of 33 years, “it is difficult to find engineers to work with us because we do not pay well.” The Bachelor of Business Administration believes that it can properly run the site “to volunteer, because people work two hours a week and no more may be required.”

His goal now is to “improve service”. For example, an “application for mobile phone,” AirBNB like that puts travelers in touch with home in apartments and private homes, and has achieved some eighty million euros of funding having grown 800% in 2010 .

Hoffer CouchSurfing does not give figures, the index 1700 Alexa ranks as the most visited Internet. “We have a lot of traffic and a lot of expenses on servers and bandwidth,” he says.

If the first step is to improve the supply, the second is “to grow. A road that will lead to the goal: go public.” As no investor money without releasing the vacuum to a return on investment, before advertising on the page added.

It will not be today or tomorrow. “We are still discussing what business model adopted for CouchSurfing. We do not want annoying ads and in any case, you must please the community. In addition, most services will remain free so that people can continue traveling around the world” , defends Hoffer.

¿Split the money among the volunteers who have written code, which have translated the site into other languages ​​or between landlords? “We are three million people in 230 countries. It would be difficult to share the money among all, if we did. The reality, however, is that we are not profitable.”

The $ 7.6 million (5.5 million) obtained from serve investors, he says, to hire the best engineers, “so that eventually the money will be returned to the community in the form of improvements.” Hoffer believes that when people understand the way the site will include undertaking “and accept”.

The site no longer accepts donations, volunteers and partners continue to be welcome. “Our social mission has not changed, although we now have company,” Hoffer insists, adding: “Part of the money paid as taxes on New Hampshire will be for a charitable initiative. Each project is eligible for $ 30,000 (21,000 euros).” It is the cultural exchange fund CouchSurfing.

So we go from NGO to B rated to IPO!

I don’t know what to think of this except for that we’ve been missing out on some financial analysis here. So…

Some random numbers

I don’t think the valuating the company based on the number of 3 million members makes any sense, a large part of those are not active (heck, quite a few must have died by now even). So let’s do a search “Everywhere” for people with host status Yes or Maybe. Today, I get about 350.000 results.

If we assume that 7.6 million US$ have bought 10% of the company that gives a value of a bit more than 200$ per host.

With the current rate of 30.000 new signups per week and a hosting ratio of about 40% (yes+maybe) that means the company’s value is increasing with 2.4 million US$ every week.

Not bad, aye?

Well, that presumes that the new signups are as much into hosting as people who signed up 5 years ago.

Funny enough, today there were 2500 fewer potential hosts than yesterday.

And… rumors have it that over 100.000 members have deleted their profile in the first week after the announcement of going B-corporate.

Far from it, I actually think CS is going forward in many ways for the first time in a long time and it’s not moving slowly. CSI has had an upgrade. Not one that any of us like, but i think for the vast majority of CSers who are fairly or really shallow it is a great thing. CS can become even cooler, with them and throw off the nomadic, dumpster diving traveller types, that bring it down or are just too deep or conscious, for them. CS is now a primetime show, it has some serious people involved, who know what they are doing and look like they are giving good advice. The only problem is is the direction that advice is taking them in. From what I see, they are headed for the mainstream and the boys are going to make money. Isn’t that what everyone said they would do, although New Hampshire law and even the bylaws of the incorporated company stated, that they couldn’t. Well they have and we now know how much we can rely on those laws.

A public owned entity has been transformed into a private owned entity,which is IMO was an illegal move, upon which shares have been issued and distributed between private individuals, in complete secrecy. I would say at a minimum the VC investors have taken 10%, valuing CSI at, US$76M. Where dose this value come from? The only assets CSI have is the concept in a functioning form with history, the code and the database. I doubt the code is worth anything near this, the history and brand recognition have worth as dose the database. You have been sold out. The only decisions you have to take is; are you going to appeal or take any other legal action, which i would support or not and are you going to continue to involve yourself in Casey’s get rich scheme?

It’s still a great ‘network/community of people’. People are people and i like most of em. You don’t even need an working account, its just a community of people who like to get of the couch and go somewhere, do something, meet someone, see something, eat something, learn something, hear something and dance. I don’t see CSers as an extension of CS, I see CS as an extension of CSers.

If the people in brainstorming who know the deal and give a shit, really want to put a dent in CSI they would turn their backs on cs and cs forums. Maintaining a post, nailed to the mast about why the ship is abandoned and where you can now be found BeWelcome.org.

BW still has some minor bugs, which were working on. Yes members are joining everyday, yes there is more hosting everyday, yes it needs a kick up the rear, yes you guys are needed to give it that kick and for more of us developers to pipe up and offer to contribute. http://lists.bewelcome.org/mailman/listinfo/bw-dev-discussion Either to a thorougher debugging session of the current in-house code(PHP, JS, HTML, CSS) or the rebuilding the whole site on the Drupal framework(Drupal, PHP, JS, HTML, CSS). BW is great because it works without leaders, but that is also its weakness, because many people don’t have the time or are unable to do the planning of the project, defining objectives, making sure the objectives have been met. Were working on that. If you really want to show that you are serious about non profit, openness, accountability, etc, etc, you will spend less time on a site that has proven that it is none of these things and now that it is a private limited liability corporation, never will be and more time on a site that is already all of those things beWelcome.org.

If your happy with having no option but to get used for your hosting and guesting needs, then keep on feeding CS your energies, so that Casey can become a bigger millionaire, than he now already is, even with just a 10% share or 5% or even 2.5%. Its your call!

I actually think these investors may be in it more for the social benefit than the money, but they will make money, lots of it. I think it will actually be good for CSI to have someone who knows what they are doing and can teach them how to do it. Even better for cs i don’t think they(the holy family), will learn and will get pushed aside as the ‘best thing for the corporations mission’, to get more members and so more share value, a bigger ego and longer holidays. Growing CS is all the investors need to do to make money! The original invested US$7.6M is probably already worth US$8M, so a estimated US$400k profit in a matter of weeks, not bad! The best thing they could do would be to ask for no money from the members, 10¢US verification, make everything else free or cheap, have great code cool features, even funding offline events, even implementing a fairly good safety policy and even host insurance. Member insurance i’m sure wouldn’t be a bad side line. You got to think outside the box a little to see the full picture on this one. But one things for sure, CS ain’t going to be anything like what you knew it to be. Casey has been taken off the drugs and wheeled out on the PR team, giving everyone ‘insperation’, god help them!. Yea man, I s.., I see, I see, a couch. Cool! I see someone spamming many people in a cold place. I see someone making promises they will never keep. I see a group of people who for half a decade won’t communicate with a community who are donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to them. I see a community with gold fever, ‘I say there’s gold in them there couches!’.

Each and every one of us is responsible for the future. We collectively decide what happens, we co-create a large percentage of the reality around us. Both through our words, but also and importantly through our actions. Decide today right now what future you want and act upon it. Are you going to see to it that at least one non-profit hospex site functions well and correctly, that the developers know what the community wants and make suitable plans to achieve objectives and acts upon them, that the project has sufficient developers to meet its needs, rallying round to find them, if needed. We have the technology, we have the resources, we have the mental acuity and i think after the years of making noise about it, we have a duty to get this done.

“In my opinion the only way out is a Faebook/Google Sofa application with a fair business model that will be eventually bought one day by a big company.” I wasn’t so far off the mark, only just a few weeks back

You know how you deal with trolls? Well you can do the same with websites and shitty organisations.

Focus you love and insperation on BW and not your hate and frustration on CS!

A group of brainstormers were recently spotted taking a dip in the hot-tub. Really this is my idea of people still trying to effect anything on CS. Give it up guys, put up a trust foreclosure notice on the group, pack up and leave. There is only one game that i see being played now and thats ‘grab some shares if you can’. Thats a game that ‘most’ you are even further behind on.

LnP

Now you see information about money and how great verification is, and a form that is for you to fill in. “Can I deal with that later maybe?” is probably what you think. But no! You can’t find the next continue button! Help! Where is the “skip this” button? How do I get out of here? I thought C$ was for free?

And what? Oh you live in Denmark? Bad for you, your suggested minimum donation is set to be $69.71 currently. And don’t you even think of paying less than that “recommended” amount because you won’t get through the form!

Ah, you live just across the border in Germany. That’s cool, you then pay $48.37 dollar less ($21.34). That’s 3 times cheaper for 5 kilometer! Hey, didn’t Casey just promise the community: “Just because we’re not a non-profit doesn’t mean we’re actually “for” profit”

Anyway. No worries. If you have no money, you can still become a member. As Casey wrote before, “The CouchSurfing features that you use today will continue to be free”. To help you further, you can apply for free verification through a verification scholarship.

But unfortunately the page doesn’t give you much information, and it still tells you that you have to pay (oh did the tech-team again release something without talking with communication dept? Where is Casey when you need him? Oh wait, he’s partying at Burning Man!)

And in despair you go to the address-bar and type: http://couchsurfing.com and pfff, it finally works.

If you want to play a funny game, try to leave a negative ref to Casey and its gonna be erased right away! Wow! life is great!

Casey must have been getting a lot of them since the recent announcement of selling our data.

Oh, and a special shoutout to my haters here

For those just tuning in, where are we in the scenario? We’ve seen a community founded on lofty ideals, grow, nay burst with activity and numbers, we’ve seen hubris take the form of work-as-permanent-vacation, we’ve seen scandals of every sort imaginable, we’ve seen the falling out of all the idealistic volunteers and – not so long ago – the original founder has gone into hiding. As predicted, the money-flow eventually became insufficient to full-fill the beast that was created. Worse yet, the beast had not been paying taxes because “the IRS didn’t understand the innovative commercial nature of our non-profit” and now must be fed even more:

“I think the best possible structure is the one we have. One of the challenges with nonprofits is it’s difficult to adapt quickly and easily from a business model perspective because you need clearance from the IRS. Now we get that flexibility and we’re still making a statement.” – Dan Hoffer (in Techcrunch)

What is amazing is that they have found VC money (a mere 7,6 million $, which is actually pretty abismal and probably indicative of the low expectancy of success) and have thus kept afloat even now. The CS inner crowd are survivors, you have to respect that at least. And they know how to lie to, judging by this bit:

“Indeed, one of the big reasons they decided to take funding and switch the company’s classification was to make it easier to recruit stock-option seeking engineers.” (same Techcrunch article)

Anyone who knows anything knows the switch in classification was forced unto CS, after years of fruitfully trying to obtain 501(c)3, but I guess it’s important to start rewriting history as soon as possible.

Here’s the problem though. How are they going to earn those VC’s their big bucks? You have to keep in mind that the expectation here is about 5-7 times (!) the investment in about 4-5 years and the clock has started ticking. It is easy to see that the current revenue stream just doesn’t work: verification fees are eventually going to dry up (most likely have hit their peak already). And donating to a for-profit? I just don’t see it happening. This means CS is going to have to find a steady income stream and – I would expect – even have already made indications to the VC’s of where they might get it. Now, I only see two options:

1. They start making money off the “daily activity”, which would be hosting itself. Dan hints at “premier services”, but I don’t think that is going to fly for a two reasons. a) You can only run a verification scam once. b) It is insanely hard to convert non-paying volunteers into paying customers. c) There are still free alternatives out there, BeWelcoming everyone with open arms. (OK, that’s three reasons.) I honestly doubt they will go this route, but with Todor Tashev on board it might just happen. Todor Tashev is also on the board of Meetup, a company that successfully makes money from their volunteer-run activities.
2. They go the Facebook route of leveraging the personal data that is embedded in the social network that Couchsurfing is to a large extent. The fact that Matt Cohler (heavy duty ex-Facebook guy) has joined the board as well makes this a very frightening possibility. On a practical level, this would mean letting companies access the enormous amount of personal information, so they can give you those personalized ads you’ve always wanted. The advantage is that this can be introduced in a nice and sneaky way, the disadvantage is that a large majority of couchsurfers are on there precisely because they don’t have cash to burn. I guess you can always try to schlepp airplane tickets or discount backpacks, but that is a rough business (travel is an industries with razor-thin margins, keeping afloat mainly on quantity).

A reason for me to change my couch status to YES!
And I added the following message…

I host so my status is YES but unfortunately not through the for profit company CouchSurfing. Contact me through a genuine non profit hospitality exchange network instead: BeWelcome.

I also encourage you to copy and adapt this message on to your couchsurfing profile.

Last month, the home of a San Francisco host named EJ was tragically vandalized by a guest. The damage was so bad that her life was turned upside down.

According to Wikipedia, in June 2011, a user who had rented her house for a week came back to find it trashed and missing a great amount of money and valuables. And Airbnb’s policy of not letting users know until the last minute who they’re renting to was criticized as a contributor to the incident. The company recently responded to it with a blog-post and newsletter.

With regards to EJ, we let her down, and for that we are very sorry. We should have responded faster, communicated more sensitively, and taken more decisive action to make sure she felt safe and secure. But we weren’t prepared for the crisis and we dropped the ball.

Changes will also be made on their website in terms of trust-levels.

Our updated user profiles chronicle their public history on Airbnb, giving you more insight than ever about a potential host or guest. Along with standard social information, you’ll also see if a user has verified their phone number, connected to their Facebook account, and whether the majority of their reviews are positive or negative. And as always, you can read their reviews and references.

I’m planning to switch the site over to twentyeleven, the latest WordPress default theme. It supports mobile devices and has all sorts of accessibility stuff built in, so I think it’ll serve us to move over. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments here. If anyone strongly objects in the next 48 hours, I’ll consult the mailing list before taking any action.

Isn’t this what has already been done or at least had a good stab at?: BeWelcome, Tripping. So everything has been done.

I don’t think the issue is that cs.org is shit and CSI is incompetent, its that the bulk of the hospex community only really use cs.org. People like popular and in hospex it is better to use a network that has more people on it. I’m at the end of a 3 week trip round Taiwan, i had to sign up on CS again, because both BW and T only have one member here, CS has 6000+. The BW member hadn’t loged in for two years and didn’t reply and i don;t think i contacted the tripping member. The CS account was deleted BTW, some how they worked out it was me. Leaving two members with positive references from a deleted account. One who i was their first guest and the other who i was their second guest, both very happy to know and host me. That pissed be off for a while, but when surrounded by so many beautiful, wonderful people, with a medium sweet hot milk tea, ordered in perfect international sign language, with lots of laughing and bowing and shear delight, WTF is CS to me anyway?

Great question. As i’ve said many times, to me CS is the community, with a big side order of Cow Shit International. We all know that. We all also know that Casey ain’t gona let anyone play with his toys. It has also been said many times, go get some of your own toys. And we have, BW, T and even Servas. So the solution is already there. The only problem is, is that people aren’t coming across from CS. Maybe it the designs, but i think its simpler than that. Sheeple(sheep like people. follow the herd).

I thought that could be got round by creating something from within. But the community is like any large or small group of surfers. To move a group, even across the street, you need to get part of the group to start moving, and the other notice and move to be with the others, if the lead members move too fast, they’ll generally find themselves having to wait or even go back for the others.

I think that we need to think about how we can get more drift going from CS to the others, maybe we just moved too fast. We can’t do much online on CS.O, but offline i think has a lot of potential, through traveling interaction and local meets there is lots of scope to attract more members across. I think that it probably comes down to a marketing pitch, essentially. That how most people think these days: Why should I? Whats in it for me? So if were serious about hospex, we should be able to offer advantage and sing it from the roof tops. If we want to shift the hospex focus more on to the alternatives, then we need to offer some big carrots. Tripping had a nice one with its competition for the round the world tickets, but is just empty promotion really. I know the person who won it and how they won it and that makes me even more cynical to the idea of this form of promotion. The carrots need to be in advantage of moving, feature and function benefits, safety, help, discounts even, but not a one off firework show.

There are a huge range of additional directions that a global, mobile and talented hospex community can go in, which can add value in many ways. Like not just assuming that someone only wants to stay for 2 nights and move on. I was toying with the idea of staying here in Taiwan for 3, 6, 12 months or more, why limit a hospex site to short term. I feel like a host to all visitors to london and feel like a guest where ever i go. Flat sharing, home swaps, home and pet sitting, camping. Shower surfing, would have been great a few days ago when i was host’s sofa was on the terrace above his bar, with only a cold tap to wash with. Structured language exchange. Suitcase hosting. Someone has been hosting my case for three weeks while i cut loose with just a rucksack. All these things could probably be arranged through CS messaging, but if they were thought about and catered for and promoted they, with other carrots, could be able to start the drift away from CS, as well as, attracting fresh hospex members .

I would have liked to have expanded on some of these points more, but i have a flight to catch in 7 hours and won’t have internet in the sky, sadly. Some of you, most of you are probably grateful for this fact. But i hope this stimulates some productive discussions and even action, to make some big improvements in a tolerant, open, expressive, positive, hospitable community.

Love and Peace from Taipai to one and all that comes from it.

This was not the primary reason i and many others, signed up to cs, but it was an indicator to me and many others as to the atmosphere of the site, network and organisation. I think that it was right to remove this mission, as CSI consistently made the world a much worse place, for many of its members. It has also failed to multiply any of its members efforts to make the world a better place and actively prevented many from doing so. Even doing anything to make CS a better place, let alone anything in the real world, has proved to be beyond the abilities of casey fenton, dan hoffer, jim stone and mat bauer.

Making the world a better place for me is what i live for, its how i was brought up, in my culture, religion, family and community. Its natural or at least intelligent, to want to do so, it is how our species have got as far ahead as they have. We naturally look out for others, attending to the old, the young and disadvantaged. I see it everywhere i go. It is natural for our species!

If CS can make the world a better place, it will be that it has brought together like minded people, who actively care about their fellow humans and other species and the world we all share.

For me personally, the triviality of the politics of CS and to an extent the general hospex scene is pathetic, juvenile and a blockage to achieving anything productive. I was twice deleted for trying to achieve positive and productive initiatives, wasted countless hours, days, weeks even on the general mess that CSI has created for itself, as well as donating 25 bucks, to a ‘charitable’ cause and i’m not the only one that has done the same, with no result.

Ok this is a complicated thread and i’ll try and steer it closer to the centre. OK. Most of the, comments from people who are aware of the reality of CS are angry and negative, which in my view is a natural reaction, when you have been cheated, lied to, abused, defrauded, etc. BUT. Big but here. But, these negative emotions and states are fundamentally non-productive on the whole and do nothing towards the aspirations of the writer, the community or the greater world. If they prompted or forced change then they would be positive, but this is not often the case in CS, the reverse is often true, in that they have made the shy leadership hide even more and be even less unproductive.

Since my first deletion, i have had a lot of space away from that anger and negativity, which really made my world a better place. I allowed a global amb, who knew me personally, to initiate a process to get my account back. I won’t go into this story, because its looong and negative. But during this time i had a lot of time to think. The result of this thinking and having my account restored, with additional lifetime, censorship and restricted movement and association terms(designed to make a person angry imo), was to setup a site where the community could talk, associate and organise community projects, in a positive space.

www.couchsurfingcommunity.org has been up for around 8 months. I put a 3 month personal limit on the amount of time i would actively spend on the site. This project, i would say currently, has failed. The reasons are numerous and varied, but the most common ones are, lack of interest in CS ‘anymore’, fear of negative reprisals, personal dislike of me, because of lack of understanding of my style of dealing with problems and most common of all, amongst the masses is, ignorance, disbelief or simple apathy ‘I’m alright Jack’. I don’t want to dwell on negative things and really the failure of CSC was very positive for me, as i discovered that given a clear opportunity to do more in one year than CSI has done in total and make CS many times better, that few people had the courage to stand up an be counted and even fewer to actually do anything when they did join. This made the situation very clear and i learnt a great deal from it and from the whole CS experience in general.

I don’t see this as a specific CS problem, it is far more general than that. Which is why this thread is here. The problems in CS are a mini version of problems in the wider world. Most people in this world don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves. This is at the heart of most of the problems around the world and at the root of what leads many people to to say and do negative things as a reaction. This is quite natural in most modern societies, because it is how we are brought up(educated/conditioned), but it is unnatural to the human animal, by default.

If the people, who pay more than just lip service to the idea of making a better world, actively made it better or at least have the desire to do so, collaborating in an organised way to multiply the results, conversations like this would not be needed.

Now this is the interesting part, well for me anyway, because its complicated.

First off. Creating anything where one party forces/coerces another to do something, that they would not normally do, by whatever means, is bad. I am a big believer autonomy and where persuasion is needed, in carrot, not stick or tricks. Further in my mind any sustained group that gather around a philosophy, is a cult. This is a very big part of why I chose not to put up a big vision on CSC, which is one of its biggest criticisms. The other big part was because, i didn’t want to impose my thoughts onto our community. The hope was that collective community conversation would mould the site however we choose. I was ready, able and willing to provide resources that would reduce the system based problems and facilitate a successful project.

So whats the answer to that? The philosophy of no philosophy? That dose not work either, because it requires people to think for themselves, doomed. The answer in my mind is to have a minimal non intrusive base set of terms and rights and use technology, to resolve system based problems. Rules are needed when the system can’t deal with an event. In my mind rules are the symptom of poor/lazy system design. So the aim would be to create a site that is generally designed to protect members, giving them the freedoms of real world interaction as well as methods for self defence protection.

This is simpleish on a single small site, but when looking at a more complex situation, such as the wider hospex community or even the make the world a better place community, there are many details that will never come together under a single project. This for me is part of the beauty of the world. It is too detailed to ever fit everything into one mould

What is needed imo, is a loose organisation that acts as a conduit between disparate organisations, communities and individuals, that allow them to communicate, function and achieve objectives together, whilst maintaining their autonomy.

I have a couple of domains that i have registered to build one or more networks, when i have the time and money, hopefully later in the year. These sites are more general than CS or even CSC, but not as wide ranging as i would want, because being too general/simple, requires a lot of work, to then be attractive to numbers of people large enough to create a functioning community. A more general network would aim to attract a smaller number of diverse players/networks/groups. I have seen the need for such a network for many years in the charity/npo space. In my mind the best way to create such a network is to start from grass roots, create something of value that will naturally attract like minded organisations/communities/individuals.

Making the world a better place sounds like hard work to many people and immediately cop out. ‘Shit man, you mean, i have to actually do something, na, i’ll pass thanks. Let me know when you have a plan where i don’t actually have to get of the sofa’. I’ll leave it to another text to break down the folly of this thinking, maybe even a whole book, but the rewards of this type of project will always be immeasurably bigger than the positive effort used to achieve them.

To get a project going would require a base set of professional individuals, who can bring design, technical, legal and financial skills and knowledge. One of each is enough to start, although the more the better. Location, age, colour, sex and sexuality, nationality, religion and size are irrelevant. Knowledge and a little intelligence is all that is required. Doing it properly from the start, with a clean slate, is for me, the key to the success of such a or any, project.

If any of you reading this has a beating heart and a determination to make this while world a better place, for everyone or even if just for yourself, your children, then i implore you to email me timloal@gmail.com

I have a lot of time, energy and resources to work on such a project, if any of you also have the courage to act and not just get angry. I am not about getting angry or about being passive. Another way is possible. Though the change first needs to happen within you.

LnP

Tim

Seems that Casey is giving up the 501c3 status due to “This approach is one that doesn’t fit into the categories our government traditionally uses.”.

I’m not amazed, but I *AM* disappointed. Seems to me one good reason to (re)try BeWelcome.org!

Create a Customer Profile with CouchSurfing Postcards which allows you to shop faster, track the status of your current orders, review your previous orders and take advantage of our other member’s benefits.

For some users of Couchsurfing, a survey has been launched to check how much interest there is for this new service. Interesting enough the maybe-soon-to-come-about service is not offered by Couchsurfing but seems to be going through a partnership-deal with a company called AIgypsy, a for-profit company which already registered the domain end of 2009.

The Couchsurfer behind this idea is ssri, who on his profile states: “The postcard project is delayed yet again due to a random survey/beta test this month”.

…the paradox is that they’re often more authoritarian, even autocratic, than the most tightly controlled for-profit firms. The volunteer model makes them almost feudal in structure: an enormous mass of unpaid serfs, kept in line by a small group of paid manager-nobles, in turn serving at the pleasure of the kingly founder, whose authority is more or less absolute. After all, when you create a dominant website but eschew the vast wealth that could come with it, conventional checks on your power no longer apply. You have no shareholders or paying customers to mollify. Competitors don’t bother challenging you, since how can they beat a market leader when that leader is unbound by market forces?

…Assange, similarly, has said that he alone makes the final call about what WikiLeaks will post. To this list of digital sovereigns we might someday add two young barons: CouchSurfing’s Casey Fenton and 4chan’s Christopher Poole.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/02/st_essay_assange/

Ulto contacted CouchSurfing to report the host’s misconduct and left negative feedback on his profile warning other women to stay away. The host retaliated by posting nasty comments to Ulto’s profile, including calling her a “psycho.” CouchSurfing remained silent. So, she contacted them again. Silence. On the third try, she threatened legal action and got their attention. But even that failed to keep it.

The amount of misconducts that happened due to hosting or being hosted by and through people met on Couchsurfing and other hospitality networks are as far as I am aware thankfully limited. But is seems that the safety-team is not up to understanding how to deal with acute safety issues adequately.

Still, the online service ignores complaints from women and LGBTQ travelers who have been attacked, drugged, raped, molested, and harassed by hosts. (These complaints can be found on CouchSurfing’s own message boards, and elsewhere around the Internet.) CouchSurfing denies responsibility with the pat response that victims should more vigorously vet potential hosts and report illegal behavior to the proper authorities in the country in which they’re traveling. The onus for safety is on the victim, not CouchSurfing. But this manner of thinking ignores the way the system itself facilitates illegal behavior, or at least, does little to prevent CouchSurfing from being used for nefarious purposes.

How the safety-team currently operates might even become a reason why hospitality exchange networks soon will be on the decline again, or change how people trust strangers. Maybe it is time for Couchsurfing to come out in the open about their safety-policies, have their policy more public and facilitate a public or at least a semi-public debate about it.

Find more information and critique through this comment posted on an earlier post.

Small in itself, I think this is quite an important observation, and a great way for Couchsurfing also to reach out to the community. For example to ask for new drawings and have members to vote on those. But instead of seeing this as an opportunity to increase member-involvement, this was the answer:

Thank you for your suggestion! We have added your idea to the wish list for the tech team. However, please note that our tech team’s “Must Do” list is large, followed by a larger “To Do” list, followed by an even larger “Wish List.” Therefore, we have no way to tell you if, or when, your suggestion may ever be implemented.

Guys, Girls, pets and stuffed animals, I think we can leave the holy family to win. WTF they have won, escapes me(money maybe(Ohh goddie(Fools))), but i know personally that whilst the battle has already been won countless times, the cult like, closed minds of the ‘organisation’ would only be opened by a FBI assault team, in the desert, on a lonely farm somewhere. Namisain. The amount of time and energy that has been wasted on trying to get them to stop being such babies, could have moved a small mountain or educated a kingdom.

Seriously, i’m tired of trying to make couch surfing better and i see a world that can be made much better, in many ways, easily. Dose any one want to get back to making the world a better place? Or how about even just making your life a better place?

Towards the end of last year, is stopped helping others and focused on helping myself. I started this year with a mission to make 2011 a good year. In january i had the opportunity of a good job in Thailand and then a telecoms consulting contract in southern Africa. I was in need of good work and a holiday. By not, just sitting around bitching and getting of the sofa and doing something, i’m now writing this by the sound of the pool hoover, bobbing around, in front of me and the pool bar staff asking if i’m unjani.

As well as getting the good work, money and holiday that i needed, it has been beautiful to learn the social basics of an African language, understand how, through language and culture they view the world differently and also how they view the world the same. It is also interesting to see the issues here that are different and the same. Learning a new language, meeting new people, making new friends, doing good business, helping a developing people with what i do best engineering technological and business strategies and solutions, has made me feel so alive, i want to feel like this all the time!

In two weeks, i have done more for more people, that i have done in two years within couchsurfing. Within 2 days we built CouchSurfingCommunity.org, within 2 hours i built the first proxy, well it was actually about 30 minutes, but i like the 2 theme), in two seconds we can decide to make meaningful actions, collectivly. I see that the CouchSurfingCommunity.org hasn’t done much, through lack of support, which is a surprise. If the cs org is so fucked up and is supported by a community who wouldn’t give a dam if the first development team had been murdered, then i don’t see what there is left to be interested in on this network any more? It dose nothing other that contain members, like an old bucket. It is the members that create the community and make it alive!

I say we get out of cs on mass, keep your account but set it to coffee only, use BW, Tripping and Servas, support the alternatives.

The horse is dead guys!!!!!! (<< an thats from someone who normally never uses exclamation marks)

Love and Peace

A related issue is that my percentage of “CouchSurf requests replied to” dropped from one moment to another from 100% to 80%. And going back into my archive I seem to have only missed three requests that were send to me while I was traveling and that were short notice. This obviously doesn’t explain the sudden drop, since I have received hundreds if not a thousand requests over the past 4 1/2 years. And responding to the last one pending only made the percentage increase with 1 percent…

Weird, especially since again there is so little communication about the changes made in the system (this news-item of June 2010 seems to be the only communication). And this is not the only issue, as suddenly I seem to have a bunch of “neutral references” which before used to be positive. Or maybe the explanation is that the amount of bugs is increasing, as in my history of couchrequests there seem to be only a hundred e-mails. Of which the latest dates back to 07/11/2008 (obviously missing a couple of years).

There’s no easy way to combat this type of spam. New user signups are pretty constant. We have a great deal of “spam” users already on the database who have not yet posted anything. Let’s hope they remain dormant.

If you have other ideas about how we can respond to the spamming, please contribute in the comments here. I’m happy to change the settings back if that’s the consensus. My feeling is that because this site is so quiet now, it’s ok that new users need to ask on the mailing list before they can write posts here. What do you think?

There is no change to comment settings. Comments work just as they did before.

In the meanwhile I’ve built tons of Drupal sites, and some CiviCRM sites. Now I’m very happy to see the idea of collectives show up in another part of my life: folks at a Massachusetts based Drupal consulting company are proposing to set up Drupal Work Collectives.

The Drupal commune would be open to whomever wanted to come join in for a period of time and help advance the cause. Every member of the community would provide a special skillset to the team, be it coding, theming, graphic design or documentation. Some people could be permanent residents at such places and others could come and go based on work available and projects being worked on. Of course at first, we think it would have to start as more of a couch-surfing type thing. People who have the space can offer it up, recruit and house a few drupalistas for the duration of a project, like contributed work, or payed client work. From there, teams could assemble all around the world, do the necessary work, and do it better than they could alone, all while being able to enjoy and explore the world. Then disband, these communes or colonies don’t have to be permanent, although that is the eventual goal.

I’m looking forward to participate!

Hello translation team members!

First, I want to thank you all for your dedication to this team and for wanting to help make CouchSurfing available to more members around the world. Translations is important to us and we couldn’t do it without you.

I understand from Benjamin that this team is on strike and no longer actively translating the site. He has brought up several issues with us that we are trying to better figure out. This area is important to us and we want to be sure that we have thoroughly researched the issues before we proceed with a larger scale solution and possibly make it worse. I apologize if this process is taking longer than some of you may like. As you know, CouchSurfing is a non-profit organization. With very limited funding we, in turn, have very few resources to dedicate full-time attention to every program that we offer. Our tech team alone has hundreds of priorities listed and are working around the clock to get to everything as quick as possible.

We have certainly not given up on our Translations area and are working to correct the issues as soon as possible. Many of these issues are complex and difficult to understand exactly what is wrong with them but the tech team has been steadily resolving the reported bugs concerning it. For example, this weeks’ updated code release included some fixes to some backend functions that should help. It was reported that some updated translations were overwritten whenever our website code was updated. This should now be fixed. If you see this still happening please report it to the SBOT team, through your designated coordinator, or directly to us at www.couchsurfing.org/help and choose the Translations option in the dropdown menu at the bottom of the page.

Also, our WebOps coordinator has asked Benjamin to step down from leading this team. In the coming weeks we’ll be talking to some team leaders about forming a new overall leadership post.

We understand that the translation system is not optimal and some of you may choose to remain on strike. But if you’d like to continue translating please do. It’s completely up to you. If you no longer wish to remain on the translations team we ask that you kindly remove yourself from the translation groups and let us know in the future if you’d like to come back. Again, this is completely up to you. We appreciate and value your help and want to help you help the organization for as long as you’d like to contribute.

Thanks for your help, everyone. We couldn’t do what we all do together if it wasn’t for team members like yourself. You rock!

Happy Surfing and translating!

Jim Stone
Chief Operations Officer
CouchSurfing International

I couldn’t have written a better analysis than Margaret’s:

…has the CS management never heard of working together to reach a compromise? What about ‘negotiation’…does that word ring a bell?

I find Jim Stone’s answer to the Translations Team to be both disrespectful and disingenuous. If I had to devise an approach to the management of volunteer groups which would definitely *not work*, and would alienate and anger any competent volunteer, I could not have come up with a better example than this post from the COO.

I cannot imagine why any sane person, excepting those with pathologically low levels of self-esteem, would continue to volunteer for this organization.

This post is an example of exceptionally incompetent volunteer management because:

1. Jim says that his team must more thoroughly research the areas of concern, that Ben and this same team have already clearly and concretely outlined, before making any changes…why? Because (in classic arrogant disregard of volunteers by paid staff…) to follow the advice outlined by Ben, the team leader, would “…possibly make it worse” (“it” being the situation…please see paragraph 1 in the link Kasper provides). This is administrative double-speak at it’s most irritating….and is a thinly veiled excuse to buy time.

2. Jim excuses his own management incompetence by saying this: “As you know, CouchSurfing is a non-profit organization. With very limited funding we, in turn, have very few resources to dedicate full-time attention to every program that we offer.”

NO! I have never, ever, in my 5 years of reviewing non-profits, seen any organization excuse unprofessional behavior by saying, well…ya know…we’re *just* a non-profit.

Non-profits are held to even GREATER standards of professionalism than for-profits; they have to be, because they rely upon the public trust for funding. You never, ever, ever, want to betray this public trust…so to say that you cannot run or fund your programs appropriately because you are too poor is admitting your own inability to run the org….every non-profit is in this same situation…other managers just manage it better!

Jim Stone suggests that CS can’t do its job because it does not have the riches of a for-profit company; this excuse is simply insulting to the literally millions of non-profits which perform miracles, daily, on shoestring budgets: providing food, housing, jobs, hope and life to humanity, simply because this is their charitable mission. This can-do spirit is INSPIRING to volunteers…people want to join an org that puts it out there, for the universal good, despite having limited funding. Limited funding is not an excuse in the non-profit world. NO ONE wants to pitch in and help an organization which excuses its own management incompetence by saying they dont’ have enough money!! Do these guys want to drive away their own staff? good lord, it’s astonishing.

(the poverty plea is actually a lie: CS has tons of money…more than enough…to fund its programming. They simply *choose* to not put this money toward programming. What do they spend it on? Cohabitation bonuses, airfare, rent for luxurious spaces on the beach, and that nebulous catch-all category: Talent http://www.couchsurfing.org/donation/where_does_the_money_go

Jim has shown, in this post, a distressing lack of talent. If you add the entire expenditures from the Talent portion of the financial pie, you’ll see that CS spent (I’m assuming this past year, since this info is not dated…incompetence again) $1,590,172 on “Talent” alone…and for what? We get a reference counter that is far inferior to one developed, for free, by Dan?

Jim is the head of Operations. According to the pie chart linked above, CS spent $169, 032 on operations during whatever fiscal time frame this webpage documents. What has that money purchased?? Jill Kohlberg, the PAID volunteer coordinator-type person is unresponsive and evidently AWOL (despite her LinkedIn profile saying that she’s still getting a CS paycheck (source: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jillkohlberger ) ….while the competent Translations Team leader, Benjamin, who has diligently worked for free, is *fired*.)

…and “operations” is spelled “opperations”!

Well… I have one thing to add, it’s the first public post of someone in the higher spheres of CS in a while. One has to have respect for that!

Thanks DAN° for your contribution. Maybe in time, CS Inc will include more changes inspired by external agitators.

Never met him. From his posts (mainly Brainstorm group) got the impression, that he has problems for not being as important as he was (he often “mentions”, how he used to be “big”). Looks like he’s trying to regain importance with his “watch group activities”. His arrogant self-righteousness sticks out even among his fellow BS’ers. His urge to lecture others on moral behavior & to express disdain for what- or whomever he thinks “below him” is sickening – as are his lies, as documented in my “Lies” threads in BS group. Sad thing is: he’s obviously smart, very educated & even witty sometimes – yet none of that helps:( When I had to ask his permission to KEEP him in my “Devil’s Black Box” #1 after gotten anonymously ratted to the MDST & being told then, that I had to ask these guys first, his curt reply showed his disdain for me: “Please remove my name from your profile. I do not wish to be linked to you in any way.” ALSO draw your own conclusions from his REPLY REF, IF he gives me one!

None of these 5 people have any other negative references…

*Margaret*:

I think it’s a shame to lose Henk as such an active and generous host in, perhaps, the most difficult city to find a couch…but I don’t blame you a bit, for removing yourself from the search feature. I would feel equally sad if I was condemned unfairly by a representative of CS, after having offered my home to travelers in support of the organization and its ideals. (I understand that Ulf does not feel as though Ambassadors represent CS, but most other members, myself included, consider them to be so)

Somehow these references remind me of the references that I left to Casey and some other Admins, with the difference that I actually met the people I left a reference for, and I don’t think Ulf could seriously be as upset about the BSR gang as I was about Casey&Co’s behavior in 2007.

(I removed or adapted these negative references of mine.)

Pickwick

“just a way to pay some employees more than others”

I’m fairly certain that it’s just a way to pay for the inner circle’s rent out of company/charity funds, without paying income tax on the value of the benefit. Because that’s what it usually is. And that’s what it was about when they were paying supposedly tax free flat rate ‘daily travel allowances’ for long term employees, or before that, when they paid flat rate ‘travel expense reimbursements’, or before that, when they were offering ‘free food and lodging’, as a perk for ‘volunteers’.

And it’s not as if the IRS had never come across it. There are certain areas of maximum suspicion in all tax jurisdictions: tax free benefits in kind, foreign business travel to popular holiday resorts, employing family/friends, (sub-)contracts between legal entities owned by the same people, all kinds of expenditure that may be (partly) private, etc. They all raise red flags with tax inspectors, and give them the hope of shining in the eyes of their superiors by catching a crook.

Having a nice place, however, may well turn out to be a ‘chick magnet’, as I believe the phrase is in heterosexual womanising circles.

*Margaret*:

perhaps it’s not useful to think of CS selecting for ‘dumb’ women, but to view the managers as valuing loyalty in their hiring selection. In my opinion, you must simply do your job and keep quiet to remain employed by CS. Your place is very circumscribed and the understanding is clear: if you want this job, you lose your voice.

I hosted Mandie, the former communications directors, and she was really smart. I also admire Meredith’s writing skills (current communications director) and I hear that Rachel is simply wonderful to work with: professional, prompt, responsive and super competent. I dont’ think any of these people could be considered stupid.

I do think that CS values loyalty and discernment in their hiring choices. The way to get, and keep, your job is to either not notice problems, or notice them and shut up about it…I think CS values employees who are very patient and who do not think critically about problem solving…which is a long term concern for the survivability of this org under its current management. Most organizations value employees who notice, and point up problems, early on before they become larger concerns….it’s the only way to ensure quality.

It’s A Scam!