Happy birthday.
Almost exactly a year ago, the OCS initiative was started. Initially, our hope was to entice the LT with concrete ideas and campaigns, to get them to address the various serious issues we had discovered at the heart of CS. Not much has changed however and most of the changes have not been for the better:
- CS is legally still in very dubious water. Still no 501c3 status, after… 3 (or 4?) years of claiming it?
- Casey still holds all the legal (and financial) strings and has decided to set up camp in Alaska next, which is essentially his home.
- Transparancy is down, censorship is waaay up. (Search engines have been blocked and CS has a permanent censorship/security team now, almost like during the cold war!)
- CSC Thailand can be declared a failure as well now, after the NZ meltdown. I haven’t seen anything positive come out of it, but we’re still waiting for the “memo”.
- “Not talking to anyone” has become the official communication mode for the entire organisation.
And so, with a heavy heart, I’m renewing the OpenCouchSurfing.org domainname by 2 years. In all honesty, I had serious hopes that it wouldn’t be necessary to have this website for more than a year. I (personally) was perfectly willing to “bury the hatchet” if there was even some semblance of progress. Alas, it is not to be. CS still makes me angry, especially for the obligation I feel towards its wonderful community to speak up about its numerous failure, shortcomings and shady deals.
Maybe now is a good opportunity to start thinking about OCS “2.0″. The way I see it, the signal to noise ratio on the blog could be better and there have been some points of discussion we could re-raise at this point. Anonimity, re-posting and privacy concerns come to mind. More importantly, I believe OCS should refocus its efforts towards a clearly understandable and easy to navigate website. Right now, I can only imagine the confusion of a random surfer on OCS. I still heavily support our “open for all” attitude, even with all the negativity that comes with that, but I think it can be channeled better.
So, in the spirit of transparancy and cooperation: Who would be interested in helping “revamp” and organise OCS? We’ll need to digg through a lot of information and restructure quite a bit, but I also think there is room for new activism. Things on my mind:
- An open call to ALL ambassadors for transparancy (and perhaps elections)?
- A good Q&A section, where we try to answer what CS doesn’t answer.
- Video?
- …
I also wouldn’t mind separating this “public blog” from a better structured blog with some editorial control that we could move to the front page. We could “rewrite” a lot of the current knowledge into practical, well researched and well written articles that would be aimed at the general public (including new members and press) and not just people with CS background knowledge.
DROP FROM DATABASE WHERE….
If I could spare the time, I’d probably join you on revamping a site that gives critics on CS, without the censorship. However, I just quitted CS, and will not become volunteer before I finish my study
To be honest, I have the believe that OCS is doing a great job, but CS (Read: LT) will not change. Cries for more openness doesn’t even go through the internal organisation. In my own experience, downtime that should be warned for on the forehand wasn’t emailed, and I really have doubts if that will ever change. Monkey see, monkey do, not?
Alas, not all is bad: CS is (for me) a great way to meet new people.
Congratulations! I do think OCS had some effect.
Yes, it might be a good idea to bring some more structure into the page and also rewrite some parts in order that the information is better accessible for the general public (without much CS background knowledge). However, in order to ‘entice’ and reach more people, and also transfer more good ideas, I think the goals of OCS should be closer to the on of CS (a common goal all people can identify easily with) and not create a ‘we’ vs. ‘them’ atmosphere.
Thank you T!C!K! and the others a-z
Time flies……..
The pain of deception remains…
People change for better or worse….
The cause continues……..
More people are beginning to see the real facts…….
The reason OCS has grown is the respect of the anonymous poster(good,bad,ugly) and the good people who never waver in their ideals of transparenct and openness.
Short term
1)Make the ocs wiki more visible . A good TOC for the wiki for people to browse throught the history.
2) Better search for the blog and a better TOC .
longer term
A good forum so the blog can be saved from the comment bliz.
Hope for SHE ….
Hope for crashatmine….
I agree that we need to revamp this site for the “first time” visitor. I think that a short introduction with links to the tools to find more information are the key. For example, I think a Q&A would be awesome. I think a quick summary of the major issues with links to the full backlog or how to find the full backlog is the key.
I think *rewriting* is a very tough job. It’s hard to rewrite something so that everyone is happy with it.
Also, I think we need to refocus on a call to action. What do we expect the average member to actually do as a result of visiting the site? Many people I meet say they read about it, generally agree, but so what, CS works for them.
I have an idea on that front which I will post separately…