I subscribe to the OpenCS comments feed and I’m pleasantly surprised by the slow by steady stream of new supporters on the petition. Today Jonas Riise Hamre added their support. So the list continues to grow.
Can CouchSurfing International Inc ignore this movement forever?
Yes, Callum, and they will
Personally, i think it’s time to focus on the positive and build the system that is wanted, coming from a place of integrity, designed as a community entity, and with aims, intentions, and methods spelled out for clarity.
I thnk BeW and BeV are trying to do this, aren’t they?
I agree, and I think BeWelcome is the open-source, democratic answer to the CouchSurfing Corporation.
139 petition responses (several of which are by the same people) out of 309,000+ CS members. I didn’t get a math degree so correct me if I’m wrong but that’s well less than 0.008% of the memberbase, right? At what number do you realistically expect the radical change that you are proposing to actually happen?
Maybe the better option is actually focusing on the budding organizations that actually seem to fit your needs like BeW?
Just a thought…
Dear Um,
My calculator puts 139/309’000 at 0.045%, but the numbers are still pretty small. However, if you look at the 139 signatures (or let’s call it 120 to be conservative) as a percentage of the active volunteers, I think the numbers are a lot more encouraging.
It’s unlikely people with only limited involvement in CouchSurfing will have any awareness of the issues OpenCouchSurfing looks to address. So yes, it’s natural that only a small percentage of the CouchSurfing users will join the campaign.
How many Indians did it take to expel the British empire? I don’t know, but I’ll bet it wasn’t 50% of the population. What percentage of the American population did it take to join the anti-slavery campaign? Likewise, I’m sure it was a small percentage.
Likewise, the CS leadership did not exactly aid in publicizing information about opencouchsurfing.org. Make no mistake I fully well do understand why they wouldn’t necessarily publish a news item to be shown on the front page of couchsurfing.com, as was suggested to be done via the Community News group on couchsurfing. This group was formed, and at the time dedicated to the purpose of spreading news arising from the community, Mattthew (the new General Manager) only afterwards making it known this is not how he (or the official Couchsurfing organization) saw as the purpose of the group.
So all that could be done was posting to groups (such as Brainstorm, one of the largest and most active CS groups with its 700+ members) and indicate the link on your profile in some way, such as inserting the banner http://www.pietertje.nl/cs/open.php
My profile, when posting to Brainstorm or other groups gathers around 20-50 hits per day (probably not unique day by day), haven’t checked the number for others involved in this campaign with their “banners” or other campaign-supporter signs up. And the posts in other groups (likely overlapping the Brainstorming crew) is probably in the magnitude of a few hundred people. So by some extrapolation of the numbers here, it’s likely not more than at the most a couple to few thousand members are even aware of the campaign.
So dear Um (from Chicago, US it seems), my personal opinion is that the number of petition signatures is not that small when taking into account the actual number of CS members aware of the campaign.
To make this clear for everyone: It is most likely Jim Stone and pratically him alone that is making anonymous comments all over OCS. Since this seems to be the only way CS *employees* are willing to communicate with the “outside world” we let it be.
However, Jim, if you’re reading this, please be a man and put your name on your posts. We know you disagree with us, but we’re hosting your comments (even while you won’t let us speak up on CS.com). Don’t you realise it only makes you look worse?