Right after the crash some people at the CouchSurfing Collective in Montreal had set up a Hyperboard. This appeared to be a huge success. (Unfortunately archive.org‘s web archive didn’t archive very deep. Please let us know if you happen to have some backups around.) A lot of people offered to help with rebuilding the site, with a slight slant towards a bit more transparency, decentralization and democracy. So this was probably a bit too overwhelming, since it was promptly closed by the current Volunteer Coordinator (2000 US$/month).
Another Hyperboard was opened by “Mentor” with whom I’ve been in touch through email and chat, without knowing his or her identity. Mentor had also set up thecouchsurfingbuilding2.hyperboards.com, which was a huge collection of messages, and random information, with funny and sometimes harsh comments. In the beginning I think it was kind of silly, but I gradually started to appreciate the board. So I wasn’t happy when I saw it was closed a while ago.
Now Mentor is back with a new board: opencouchsurfing.hyperboards.com!
October 2nd Addition
Apparently the opencouchsurfing hyperboard, which is not accessible anymore now, was not started by Mentor of thecouchsurfingbuilding2 hyperboard. Also, as you can read in the comments on this posts, Mentor never took part in the public discussions that are OpenCS. Let’s discuss it on the mailinglist first if you think a public OpenCS forum is a good idea,
Disclaimer just in case – originators of this site do not know Mentor’s true identity for certain, and the new boards are put up by him/her, not by the loose band of “us” (hmm. Or actually how can I really know that
I found the boards harsh at times as well, but the sheer volume of sources researched and CS groups scanned to post whatever was put up there was astonishing, and sometimes when you got past the most ridiculous claims and anonymous rants, there were pieces of information there that someone could if they wanted, go “told you so” on me.
It IS often easier to speak anonymously, but keep in mind, not knowing who Mentor (the site admin) really is, if you wish to remain completely anonymous when writing there, please take the necessary precautions.
Some historical info.
I proposed starting a refugee message board on Yahoo groups, but then Jim Stone suggested hyperboards as an alternative. It turned out to be a good choice, and was hugely successful.
Since Casey was reluctant to give anyone access to the code for the first several days of the recovery, many of us had nothing else to do but provide support for the hyperboards or answer emails. I spent much time responding to posts. I can say that there were many calls for a more democratic CS. I naively responded to some of these that CS seemed to be moving in that direction post-crash.
When I was about to leave the Collective, *** asked if I could extract the hyperboards into a flat text file. I said I would work on it from Europe (where I was leaving for the next day).
Once I was set up in Europe, I began extracting the data, which by then was voluminous. I was half-way through when the hyperboard was closed without notice. I sent what I had extracted to *** and he thanked me, but provided no explanation for the abrupt shutdown during the middle of my extraction. I could see that Jim Stone had shut down and cleared out the message boards without informing me (whose idea it was to start them and who was an administrator of them), knowing that I was working on them (or at least should have). This was one of many inexplicable and unexplained events connected with the Admins that occurred during my time as a volunteer for CS.
Unfortunately, after about a half year, I deleted the file I had, since there seemed to be no further interest in it. I wish I hadn’t.
John
I had forgotten, but now remember that besides the calls for democracy on the CS hyperboard started at Montreal, there were many harsh complaints about the lack of information coming from the CS leadership. (Sound familiar?)
This lead to some elaborate conspiracy theories that would be very entertaining to read again. One of the conspiracy theories was that somehow the CS Wondergirl had hijacked CS from Casey, since much of the official communication and leadership was coming from her instead of Casey.
John
Does not look like the previous boards. Those boards had structure. It had a lot of technical articles and articles on management .It had code analysis and everything else.
Unbelievable. My CS information has been posted to this hyperboard AND there is someone impersonating me there. This is very dissapointing and actually quite disturbing.
What kind of freak would do this?? I hope he/she is not associated with any of the OCS or BW crew because that would be throughly dissapointing.
This “hospitality war” is leaving a very inhospitable taste in my mouth. I’m taking a break from all this BS.
Azarethroy: To be clear, there is no affiliation between the hyperboards and OCS and there never was. Of course, there is “overlap” in content and there is obviously a very different approach to the entire matter. We tend to avoid making anonymous comments (you’ll find that most of the anonymous comments are “critical” and we’re pretty sure a bunch of the are from Jim Stone, based on the IP address he uses) and we try to publish solutions as well as criticism.
However, I must admit the hyperboards made me realize how important it is to keep a log of some of the silly thing the LT does, because they tend to flat out deny it otherwise. I also think if you look at the hyperboards, you’ll see that our “style” is pretty friendly compared to what’s possible.
Anyway, it’s probably a smart thing to take a break once in a while. We all move on in one way or another.
Thanks for the quick reply, Thomas. I’m confident that the core OCS crew aren’t involved, having been in contact with most of them. I support the ideals behind “open” couchsurfing but it’s also important for me to hear both sides of the story. Everyone’s perception is different and one’s own perception is their reality.
But I must say, I’m suprised that this “Mentor” person does not worry the rest of you. Their ramblings are incoherent, they don’t have the balls to identify themselves (which is hypocritical) and the fact that they have spent so much time stalking members online makes me feel unsafe. Also, by calling their new hyperboard “opencouchsurfing.hyperboards.com” is only bad news for OCS. Now you have a stalker/schizo who thinks they are aligned with the OCS movement.
Anyway, good luck everyone with your campaign & BeWelcome. I’m now going to go spend some time offline.
@azarethroy: Sorry to hear about your online “identity theft”.
I too am a little concerned by the obvious use of the openCS name for something that was not publicly discussed through any existing openCS channel. I’ll contact the administrator and see if we can open a dialog.
I would appreciate it if the administrator can reopen thecouchsurfingbuilding2 and close opencouchsurfing.
Both the hyperboards seem closed again…