You can see Alaska Collective blog here and subscribe to the feed here.
Unfortunately, comments are not allowed on the blog. To be more precise, you must be logged in to comment. But registration of new users is not allowed. So in effect, only those with permission can comment. Let’s hope this will change soon.
However, as a quick alternative, I propose to create a mirror of the blog content, with the same open-comments policy we use here at OpenCS. It’s fairly trivial to set up, and would allow open debate on each post. What do you think? Please provide a +1 or -1 in your comment if you think it’s a good or bad idea.
I can confirm the collective has started because the number of “Site Down” messages seems to have increased dramatically recently. I hope we wont experience the constant down times we did during the Thai Collective which clearly started when the Collective started, and then magically ended when the collective ended.
*****Tech guys of the collective. I beg of you. If you make changes/improvements/enhancements, do it on the test system first, and any updates/loads on the prod environment, please announce them in advance and keep user impacts to a minimum. At the very least designate a “window” for update. For example: 0400-0700 EST every Monday.
The reason the site is down more is not because of the collective. It is because of the summer. The traffic has doubled over the last month. This causes problems on monday evenings, as they are the most crowded evenings.
+1
I’d welcome a duplicate blog which allows comments, assuming that the original entries will NOT be deleted at some future time, with the consequence of all added comments vanishing as well, at the will and whimsey of someone else.
It seems the blog software works that way, and as a result a number of complete threads disappeared recently, because the original post was deleted (an excellent way of trolling, actually). I found that very disappointing. If I had realised that before, I would probably have spent a lot less time, if any, on contributing, as I have since. Is there a way of preventing this from being repeated?
Walter “It is because of the summer. The traffic has doubled over the last month.”
Summer? Traffic ?
April 9th, 2008
Location: CS Organization >> Product Development Experts >> Technology Team >> [CS Tech] News Feed
In an effort to get rid of the recent “site down” messages, the tech team have done two things:
You mean to say the new servers were of NO use?
Here is another example .
Instead of just a simple NO the LT will not release The Quality of Service survey .
Mandie writes.
Unfortunately the User Experience research coordinator who was set to come to Alaska is now going to be working remotely
SO? She makes it sound that working remotely makes things slower? Is that really the case?Do remote worker work faster or slower?
Instead of just saying the User Experience research coordinator has lost interest and does not have or want to spend time on it. OR hey just blame the User Experience research coordinator to avoid putting the LT in a spot.
Callum, +1 from me.
Pickwick, you are saying blog posts on here have been deleted??
Is this true, blog-admins, and if so, why were they?
If i’m simply confused about the meaning here, please let me know. thanks!
hrm, and now the servers are not good enough, despite VASTLY inappropiate costs for the current traffic.
i stand by my statement, money is being wasted and possibly “laundered into someones pockets” through the it costs or the tech team is incompetent in using the resources available with the money cs claims to pay
hi all
Val I think Pickwick is referring to a long thread on the 420 friendly topic where he and I questioned the general value to CS (and professional judgment) of CS admins publicizing their marijuana use. Many people took this to be a general condemnation of pot-smoking (which is wasn’t) but the whole thing got long and divisive and off-topic…even I got sick of it and I was a major poster:) The thread was deleted without explanation.
[blockquote]hrm, and now the servers are not good enough, despite VASTLY inappropiate costs for the current traffic.[/blockquote]
I think the servers are ok, but a form of “change management” should be introduced.
Walter, what I THINK I know is that server problems can be solved with some technical expertise and money, right? Well, I find it funny that our donations are used to pay for your stay in Alaska when we could improve the servers so they can handle the traffic. It is also funny that you, Walter, recently quit your job to travel the world making balloons (?!) and now we see you playing the cool guy in Alaska, eating our donations. Go back to your job, as boring as ours, or even less, and work remotely on the website while starting a diet, why not. The same could be said for most of your fellow collective members. Do we really need PR and communication experts to live there? Can’t they do what they do at home? Why do you need Matthew to be there if the only thing he does is writing documents or sending emails? But again, this is what I THINK I know.
wow, you guys have an excellent way of making a person who is trying to make an effort to explain things completely lose all will to do that. Personal attacks like this are just plain pathetic. I feel sorry for whoever “CS (Common Sense) Ambassador” is.
@larry: working remotely does make things slower. People who work from their homes usually have fulltime jobs and social lives to take care of. People here at the collective work fulltime (and often more) on things.
@the rest: new servers were introduced and they did make a change, now another piece of the server architecture is having trouble handling all our load.
I know you guys seem to think managing all of this is so easy, but I wonder how many of you have actually managed a website with this much traffic increase in just one month? And if you have and you know all of this so well, why don’t you come and help us? Change comes from within, not from rambling on a website that noone takes serious (not a flame, this is just reality unfortunately).
Besides that, most of us are just trying to do our best. I knwo it is far from ideal, but this is what we have, so we are doing our best to get by with it.
@CS (Common Sense) Ambassador i do not know what kind of game you are playing ie your screen name and the link to your screen name .Also what does walter have to do with the server? And he paid for his way to alaska unlike a lot of others who got a free ride.
You post looks like a personal problem you have with walter.
If you really know what is going on or you stop playing a reverse troll game .You will understand walter speaks up for what is right unlike a lot of other at the csc alaska like doogie.
Do we really need PR and communication experts to live there? Can’t they do what they do at home?
They can but with SO much MONEY coming in by donations they need to spend it. ALL charities have to show a loss or people will think somethings fishy so they need to spend all the money on the costly tickets ,staying in thailand and then off to alaska .
Walter quote “working remotely does make things slower. People who work from their homes usually have fulltime jobs and social lives to take care of. People here at the collective work fulltime (and often more) on things.”
@Walter how do you explain nothing being done at thailand if they were working FULL time on cs in thailand?
People who work remotely do not party all the time becuase they have to blance their free time and work. This makes them more focussed than the FULL time holiday makers at the csc alaska and thailand. If you look at the thailand photos you will see they were sitting around all the time , going rafting on the river , biking .Were they really working? (the wiki shows they did not contribute anything,classic example is the cs zone)do you think cam will ever post the report of the work done on the cs zone for the 6 months in thailand.
The best example of remote teams is NASA.And it works better than teams in one place. Why? They works around the clock . The work across time zones so are more productive.
Walter quote
server architecture humm . What happened to the co location servers?if I recollect there were 5 new server installed. And hey a really good server admin D were on the team .
Walter quote
A lot of people who have been inspired if these words were spoken by casey. But walter you are not the LT ,you know about the “you are fired letters by chris burley” you know about how jim stoned destroyed the wiki by throwning kasper out of the wiki kasper created.
Also NO NEW volunteers where recruited for the csc alaska.Also people from alaska who asked if they could help were met with silence from mandie m and pink fish . All the volunteers who failed to produce even a single document in thailand where given FREE TICKETS for the next collective and they took credite for work done by guess who REMOTE VOlunteers.
Friend of mine always says: “If you want something done, ask a busy person.”
Walter, why do you bother with these guys? Every time you post trying to explain yourself to a heavily biased group of flamers that can’t wait to see you fail, on a site that “noone takes seriously anyway”, it doesn’t really help anything, does it? Especially when you could be using that time in the position you’re in to actually do some good (rather than the people who just come here to complain). Coming here just adds negative energy while I imagine begin at the Collective is the opposite of that. Why bother with this silly website?
yeah walter take your ORDERS from bothe or botha or LT or the other brainwashed drones .
bothe ” Why bother with this silly website?”
seriously i do not even want to try and explain what this site means to all those fake positive energy makers like you . You will learn sooner or later.
bothe ” (rather than the people who just come here to complain).”
Casey and his dudes forgot to address those people who complained and the numbers of disgruntled members are going all over the world .There will come a time when silly people like bothe will be a minority on cs.Those powers hungry people who use virtual badges like Global ambassador ,Leadership team (without leadership), city ambassador to silence the majority. 3 years .The Apartheid struggle too many years.There will come a time when the segregation between ambassadors and other members will be removed.
I have a dream that one day couchsurfers will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all couchsurfers are created equal.”
There will be No more private ambassadors groups. Private LT groups, Private casey buddy groups,No more city ambassador private groups,no more ONLY AMERICANs(most white) on the board.
And if couchsurfing is to be a great organisation, this must become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty private ambassadors groups.
Let freedom ring from the private city ambassador groups
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
@Bothe: I bother because I feel like I can explain some of the things peopel accuse couchsurfing of. I just ignore all the flaming and trolling, trying to focus on answering the few valid questions here. It’s kinda sad that some people try to dissuade me from doing that, but that is just the way this website is I guess.
@Larry:
1) although I was not in thailand, from what I understand in Thailand a lot of work behind the scenes was done. In Alaska, the focus is more on “visible” things.
2) The 5 new servers were all web servers (needed in order to fase out soem older servers). They are running quite solid now.
3) Comparing remote cs workers with remote nasa workers is not really fair, as I highly doubt NASA uses volunteers.
4) Judging thailand by the pictures is also not really fair. If you were at a collective, would you take pictures of people working, or would you take pictures of people having fun when they are not working? Since I have been here there has been one party (which was a birthday party on saturday night, nothing wrong with that, right?) and all the rest of the time people are working no less than anyone can expect from them.
5) New volunteers were recruited for Alaska. We even have a girl on the tech team, yay!
6) The issue of Kasper and what happened back then is very old and needs not to be resurfaced. Suffice it to say that is no longer an issue for me (regardless of whether you guys think that is right or wrong
).
Waiting for a new batch of flames
…
5)
Oh, and if i stop replying, the flamers won and I have had enough of silly personal attacks and attacks based on no actual knowledge. Just so you know
Walter quote “In Alaska, the focus is more on “visible” things.”
“Will the “invisible things” done at the thailand collective which were “promised” to be made visible by mandie m ever be visible?
Walter quote “They are running quite solid now.”
IF (servers running sold);
then (site down message ) not equal to traffic problems?
point 3 agreed. incorrect comparison.
point 4 yes you are right there were a few NEW volunteers most of the thai volunteers who worked on “invisible ” stuff were retained , why?
Walter quote “The issue of Kasper and what happened back then is very old and needs not to be resurfaced.”
has any policy changed where we do not have people like chris burly sending out you are fried letters?
Are you saying now volunteer who create positive new apps will not have their apps taken over by jim stone ?and we will not see those letters again?
People who forget history are bound to repeat it.
So if you are saying forget the past are you saying there is some new (hidden) policy which will not get volunteers kicked out.
The reason kasper’s example is so important is to show you ,your call quote why don’t you come and help us?. Do you agree people came to help and they were treated bad. The first step to reconciliation is to accept the past….
Walter, a lot of people were holding their breath during Thailand, waiting for the results to be accounted for. They were sceptical, yes, because being told from the start that things were going to be “invisible” doesn’t sound well. But for the work or its results to be “invisible” doesn’t mean it can’t be named and explained. Instead of saying: umpteen hours spent on this and that, we were fed insults like “paid rent monthly” and “arranged water supply”. People were told they wouldn’t see results, and that promise was certainly kept. Can you blame them for concluding that there weren’t any results to be reported? Look at the Tech News Feed group Weston set up before Thailand, and the number of posts there; that’s a much more accurate picture of the amount of work done.
But Three years later, the Couchsurfer still is not free.
Three years later, the life of the Couchsurfer is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.
Three years later, the Couchsurfer is still languished in the corners of couchsurfing society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
And those who hope that the Couchsurfer needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if couchsurfing returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility on couchsurfing until the Couchsurfer is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of couchsurfing until the bright day of justice emerges.
@Walter
First off, I think it’s great that you want to give your opinions and observations here, despite the negative comments that simply arise because an open and equal platform is crucial to the credibility of this site. If we’d censor *anyone* (including pro-CS and contra-CS flamers), OCS would lose it’s value.
Regarding the “site down” issues: The strong rise in traffic before the summer is a very well known effect. Casey has seen this every year, consistently. Sorry, but any professional would see this coming and prepare for it. The server additions were made to “patch” up existing problems, but it’s still running after the facts as CS has pretty much always done.
Isn’t it odd that “remote workers” for BeWelcome can do so much in their spare time? Comparing with NASA is indeed silly, but why would remote workers be any less efficient? In my opinion, efficiency mainly depends on experience and motivation, not on location (or even pay). In any case, having to be present at the collective is a myth created by CS volunteers/staff that enjoy the payed-for traveling (as do you I presume). I would even say that some CS-ers seem even less efficient at a collective than outside of it.
tgoorden quote Comparing with NASA is indeed silly
silly = indicative of a lack of common sense or sound judgment.
It is silly when one cannot relate what the other person is trying to say.
When a person online hears the word NASA and comparsions it is difficult to relate to what the person is trying to show and hence immediately termed as “silly”
Working remotely from colleagues, team members, managers, partners, resources and clients is defining the 21st century organisation and the future shape of work. It is driven by organisations’ and employees’ wish to realise the benefits of post-geographic working.
Also remote teams created more work then the teams who were at the csc thailand.
Examples
Couchsurfing gig swap
cs zone work
Well NASA has been working with virtual teams for years and have built up a huge repository of information on how to create effective virtual teams. Casey(and others?) knew this in 2006 but did not even give it a second thought.
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/tcp/
Most NASA projects and work activities are accomplished by teams of people. These teams are often geographically distributed – across NASA centers and NASA external partners, both domestic and international. These NASA “virtual” teams are stressed by the challenge of getting team work done – across geographic boundaries and time zones. To get distributed work done, teams rely on established methods like travel, telephones, and email. Time is our most critical resource – and people are hindered by the overhead of travel and the difficulties of coordinating work across their virtual teams. Modern, Internet based team collaboration tools offer the potential to dramatically improve the ability of virtual teams to get distributed work done.
appel.nasa.gov/ask/archives/lessons.php
“People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society.” – Vince Lombardi
bothe “Why bother with this silly website?”
This site asks hard questions unlike the ambassadors group where you can be thrown out for asking hard questions or even told you are being “rude” . I see even here people are beginning to terms questions as being “rude”
Bill Plante, CBS White House correspondent
“Here’s the point,” said Mr. Plante. “It’s important that we ask questions even if some people don’t believe that they’re appropriate. They don’t have to answer them. But we have to ask them. Did I have to ask that question? That’s a point of legitimate argument.”
“I’m not saying they are wrong to do that,” said Mr. Plante. “But we are not wrong either to ask questions. Sometimes they answer, sometimes they don’t. This has been going on for a long time.”
ahah ocs is flaming again, great.
to this nasa comparison though: history and hard lessons has shown that nasa is horribly inefficient. if companies would run in that way, they would be out of business.
regarding being involved in things professionally that have traffic like cs, yeah, up to 15TB traffic per weekend, something i would guesstimate cs doesnt see in half a year.
Walter June 3, 2008 at 7:20 pm
From CS News
Technology Focused Mini-Collective Announced
The CS Collective in Rotterdam, Netherlands this summer promises to make CouchSurfing faster and more reliable
May 12th, 2007
i would guess that casey makes all these collectives in remote places because he is such a dimwit that he is afraid of some verbal hardball. recently he was near a rather huge meeting but didnt go there since he doesnt like the star type of attention, so he claims.
i think he is more afraid of getting attention by people who are not part of his yayssayer fanboi squad, i sure would love to confront out freckled midgetboy with some common sense on his disregard to human decenc when it comes to human resource management and safety issues.
Walter, thanks for resisting pressure on all sides and continuing to keep open communication. It’s invaluable and i think i speak for many when i say it is appreciated.
That said, would you mind sharing some info with us about the site-downs and shut down now of groups? It really doesn’t make sense to me. I’m interested for two reasons – one because i have a separate project which also has a zillion DB calls and i’d like to understand how much of the problem is DB overload/insufficient optimization of the DB, and how much of it is due to server load problems or other things, another because perhaps there are experts who CAN help with these issues (not me, but i know some
!).
Unless I’m mistaken, too (and please correct me on this, i’d like to know the reality), the amount per month spent for hosting was something like $1470, unless that is from my fevered mind
.
If so.. well frankly that seems like a large amount of money, and the hosting packages i’m considering offer a LOT for that much money. Like, many servers, 24/7 support, load balancing, auto-upgrade to more bandwidth when needed and adding of more servers as needed. Wouldn’t that solve all these site down probs?? (unless it’s all about the MySql). How many servers total is CS running on? What’s the total site bandwidth running to these days? (pictures are offsite now, right?)
What i’m not understanding is, with the money CS has, why not make the site have a guaranteed 100% uptime? Lots of reliable hosting sites will give you that, and all the development could be done separately on CS’s own servers on site. Why not hand off a lot of the gruntwork, given the need for uptime and constant support?
Basically i really am curious, due to parallels to my own project, as to how the weekly increase in surfers correlates to increase in DB calls/writes, page views and just general bandwidth.. what do the graphs look like? Isn’t the server scaling predictable given the rate of surfer growth? If this is all a DB bottleneck i understand, if it’s servers.. then my admittedly naive analysis is that CS should be going a different way than running its own servers, which i gather is the case. If it’s the DB.. is optimizing a goal for the summer? I’m a bit concerned about so many travelers trying to use the site with so many 504′s, and i suggest that groups be partitioned into city/country groups that travelers need access to – and discussion groups that can be periodically turned off in a planned and announced fashion.
thanks!
Zakor: “… recently he [Casey] was near a rather huge meeting but didnt go there …”
George W Bush almost only appears in front of selected audiences on secluded military venues. The boy is scared of “freedom”, it seems.
I’d love to answer all your questions here, but they are totally offtopic here and it would be much better to answer them somewhere on CS where interested people can actually find them.
So if you want answers to some of your questions: please post them there and let me know. I’ll do my best to answer wherever I can…
Walter why don’t you just say you DO NOT or CANNOT answer the questions instead of trying to play games using the terms “off topic” ,” post on a cs forum “.
It is on topic and started with your post dated June 3, 2008 at 7:20 pm
And why is cs not a good place to post.
1) All posts are lost after it reaches the end of the list.
2) The forums are not accessible to everyone unlike ocs. Also with google spiders turned off . Not all couchsurfers would find information on the forums unlike before the crash.
The google spiders is what drew a lot of new intelligent surfers to cs.
You can also post your answer a similar question asked in the brainstorm group
Unlike other places please do not BS here. A straight answer will do . No is fine. Thank you .
Thanks Walter – in fact i had written a post to this effect on Brainstorm already, and it got lost in one of the exact “Groups are down for now” episodes that i am concerned about!
I’ll post on it there soon as i get a chance – maybe this can be a good way to check in with the expertise of non-collective CSers. I’d be very interested to see their views as well. For the moment i take CS and its DB load as a cautionary tale – would like to change that or at least learn from it!
cmon people, let’s cut some slack for someone who is at least willing to communicate! Seriously. Useful answers from CS can always be reposted here, along with the accompanying discussion!
I agree
thank you Walter
Come on Larry. If I didn’t want to answer these questions I would have just not responded anymore. Is even a little bit of good will too much to ask? I’m trying to make an effort here…
Point taken walter. Thank you for being you and not getting swayed by anyone and anything.
by Ben Hanna from Atlanta, United States Community Communications
We have a tight agenda at this collective, so they cannot communication ? Well walter this is and example where remote volunteer would have time to reply like on the ocs blog!!
don’t have the time to read those comments, respond to them effectively!!
These guys are there full time with nothing else to do and they say NO time.channel them to the right people. = Spin )When they are all in the same HOUSE. This is why collectives are a waste of time . When communication cannnot even happen when everyone is in the same room .
This is where the BS is really clear.
they have time to read a thread but not comments on a blog .
Will they have time to respond the the thread? If they have no time to read the comments!!
Is everyone at the collective (except one) really non teach savvy and cannot multi task? Seriously this is really getting wierd.Tight schedule !!
This guy is content manager on cs and he does not understand the purpose of a blog?
Same spin as the thailand collective a static Collective Q&A.
Things keep getting funnier.
Correction. but no promises that they will be able to read the thread. Wow communicators who have no time to communicate. What do communicators do when they do not have time to communicate with the site which is their primary task?
They gave the same BS in thailand. Now again the same BS for another 6 months in alaska.
The photos from thailand showed mandies tight schedule (ograsm cocktails and watching movies?)
MANDIE Mccrea on the communications group the spin continues.
monday to friday been busy working on allocating appropriate time and resources to the projects
.
What does this mean? busy working on allocating appropriate time?
Reading our buddy doogies blog shows they were REALLY BUSY
betaindustries.be
Ok lets vote for the biggest SLACKER at the collective.
Mandie mcrea on the communications group
Location: CS Organization >> >> MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS >> Community Communications
Where is cyril ?? havent seen him since he joined the collective? working on email 2.0? or just partying away?
mandie is still so wet behind the ears!!realms of CUQ and the Ambassador group!! She just does not understand how to communicate on couchsurfing. She need to start posting in the brainstorm group and really get away from the LT CUQ!!
Humm its looks like as soon as weston logs into cs the site goes down. So does that mean weston is the guy who is causing the down time.
As weston NEVER ever communicated on couchsurfing no one will ever know.
Humm… it looks like when james comments on OCS the level of speculation goes up. So does that mean that james is contributing to the decreasing credibility of OCS?
Mandie writes on blog . couchsurfing . com
The start of the Northern Hemisphere Summer (traditionally a high travel time) combined with the new member load (we are at 8000-9000 new members a week!) put some sudden unexpected stress on the system. To fix the problem, we shut down group postings for a while, taking a large load off of our main database system while we handled some issues. Casey stayed up until 4:30 am making sure that everything went smoothly, and he was replaced by Walter who took on the rest of the night.
Now is that a fact.
Stress causing ONLY certain pages to Malfunction.
Lets hear the TRUTH from walter now.
Do you have any technical knowledge at all, or are you just ranting for the sake of ranting?
Anyway: we turned off the groups on purpose to lower the load on the database.
I honestly have no idea why I even keep responding here…