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Monthly Archive for February, 2011

Replacing The Airplane-Symbol With Something Less Insidious

Published by on 14 February 2011 at 22:58 in Participation and Proactive Action. 7 Comments Tags: .

Why is the “I am traveling” logo on a couchsurfing profile symbolised by an airplane? That’s what a member asked himself. He suggests to have this “pernicious symbol” replaced with a drawing that better relates to what traveling is about.

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.

Put the whip down! and, step back from the dead horse!

Published by on 07 February 2011 at 22:03 in Uncategorized. 4 Comments

Love and Peace to all.

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

Couchrequests Issues

Published by on 03 February 2011 at 13:55 in couchsurfing. 5 Comments Tags: , .

Recently the couchsurfing organisation changed the couchrequest system. For some this might be an improvement but in my experience it just creates problems. For starters one has to respond in time, before the date that the person requests for. This might be good for the guest requesting hospitality but for the potential host this means you have to reply sometimes instantly, if the date is for tomorrow for example. Otherwise the system doesn’t even allow you to respond!

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).