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Pickwick’s threat of legal action against CouchSurfing marks a change in the approach of OpenCouchSurfing. I think we need to consider whether the consensus of OpenCS supporters is in favour of this new approach.
Not to try and stop Pickwick, but whether to encourage him to work under the banner of OpenCouchSurfing or whether to keep a distance between the two.
I’d like to warmly invite people to share their views here. I’ve also started a similar discussion on the mailing list.
“For an good example check out the guide for Birmingham.” (sic!) Jim is still happily keeping up with the volunteer coordination (for 2000 US$/month). Unfortunately, doing this, he is encouraging volunteers to break copyright law. The text at the article on the CouchSurfing wiki about Birmingham looks a bit too similar to the article at Wikitravel.
My original intentions for the CS Guide were to make it into an alternative of Wikitravel, not a lower-quality spin-off. But if this is the direction chosen for the CS Guide I suggest using a Creative Commons ShareAlike Attribution license for the entire wiki (or at least for the Guide) instead waiting for legal action.
Please note that this post does not necessarily reflect views shared by all OCS posters and sympathisers. I put it here on my own initiative.
Norbert has placed the following post in the brainstorm forum on CS. I felt it should be cross-posted here, so that it can be given due public support by those who feel that’s appropriate. It sure has mine!
“This is my final appeal to Casey and the Leadership Team. I haven’t filed my report yet with the Attorney General of New Hampshire. I would prefer not to do it. I don’t like the role. And I don’t like the fact that this may divert resources into legal procedures, costs, and possible fines. Don’t get me wrong, though: I’m not making any excuses for myself. I will do it if I have to, whether I like it or not. It will not be my fault for reporting it, but the fault of those who broke the law. Yet I feel there is still time to ‘heal’ the situation. CouchSurfing has been represented as a charity without being one, and has thus violated the law. It has failed to comply with registration, reporting and disclosure duties. It has obtained donations of money, time and skills under false pretenses. It has broken the law. It has done the wrong thing. The best defence against those charges obviously is to make it a real charity immediately. That would not undo the legal violations, but it would make them ‘technical’ rather than substantial, and I suppose they could then be overlooked.
This would have to be done with credibility. Mere words will no longer be enough, especially when they are cold, and don’t show an intention to reach out. It would be good to hear an admission of mistakes here and there, or at least an acknowledgment that help from members could be useful. I would like to see the true message of strength from the Leadership Team that comes with admitting they’re not perfect. How could they be? They are mostly young, motivated people, at the beginning of their professional lives, working for us in exchange for a bag of peanuts! So be who you are; don’t claim to be Bill Gates! If you say: this is what I’m good at, and here’s where I need assistance, people will come and help you. If you claim to be perfect, and are arrogant with it, people will try to prove you’re not so perfect after all. If we disagree, by all means do it your way, and not mine, as you’re the ones doing the work, but don’t lie and don’t bully.
I believe a genuine charity is the best way forward, as it will allow motivating future volunteers. This organisation has to spend a lot of time and effort on finding out what it wants from volunteers, and more importantly: what it wants to offer them. It needs to learn urgently that volunteering is a give and take situation, and not a one way street. That doesn’t negate that many volunteers are perfectly happy. They have found rewards for their work, mostly in their own local communities. But that is their own achievement, just like the volunteering itself. The organisation does not seem to be offering much. Where’s the volunteer training? Where are the written testimonials given for thousands of hours of dedicated services, that people might use for job applications in their CV, proving they exercised and acquired skills? Instead cold emails are sent out that “your services will no longer be retained due to personal differences”. Wrong way. Volunteers need to be at the very heart of the organisation. Please treat them as ‘human resources’, not as free labour without minds. I fear there is no ‘healing’ of the wounds suffered by some ex-volunteers, as some of them seem too deep. The effort here will need to be: not to let it happen again.
CouchSurfing, and a number of individuals, may face serious legal consequences, and real pressure can be put on you to honour your word and become a charity. That will happen unless you make it obsolete by doing the right thing now. You can’t, however, be forced legally to put the word ‘irrevocable’ in your bye-laws asset dedication, but you may realise it’s the ‘open sesame’ that leads forward and restores trust. In any event, the obligations that come with genuine charity status (irrevocable or not) to adopt acceptable (team) corporate governance instead of a one-man-band, to have annual reporting and disclosure duties, in other words: public supervision, will be a huge improvement. It will be both: control and support mechanism, to ensure you’ll do the right thing. Please do it.”
When we met matrixpoint last week in Boston, he mentioned that he doesn’t like to be reminded of the red couch every time he’s visiting the OpenCouchSurfing website. First we jokingly thought, maybe of adding some black. But amylin decided that transparent silverish looks better, and I fully trust her in these matters.
I hope no one will seriously object to changing the color of the couch.
There are more important things in the world than CouchSurfing (or even OpenCouchSurfing).
I’m sure you won’t blame me for adding support to the peaceful revolution in Burma.
Pickwick about Ulf’s remarks to the formal query about the immigration requirements and CS management, in Brainstorm:
Ulf: “brought up only to be able to point out (once more) to how that mean, mean LT has not come up with them!!!”
How do you know? I brought this up because innocent volunteers were made to violate Thai law and risk jail, and I decided to do what I could to stop it.
Ulf: “I wonder why those authors would not first of all contact the organizers, tell them about those concerns”
How do you know they didn’t?
Ulf: “an appropriate amount of time to answer (2 weeks)”
It doesn’t take two weeks to answer “are you aware that a business visa and work permit are required?” In two minutes you can say either: “Yes, and we’ll brief all applicants fully”, or: “No, good gracious, thanks for telling us, we’ll check immediately, any more help you can give?”
Ulf: “that mean, mean LT”
Some who’ve met the people came here with pain, disappointment, and feeling their trust betrayed. I’m not one of them. I don’t know anybody.
From an outside view I think something happened I’ve seen many times, as consultant, and as participant, in new political parties, family businesses, charities:
The founder generation leaves a second generation power vacuum, by appointing mediocrity, so that their own power isn’t challenged, and their own glory doesn’t pale against real professional competence. I don’t think they are mean. I think they are overwhelmed by their responsibilities.
Because they don’t have what it takes to do this job they don’t react professionally, but try to lie when caught blundering. And when caught lying, they feel with their backs to the wall and try to bully. The inappropriateness of those acts backfired, so the strategy now is to be silent or evasive. It’s neither wicked nor original. It’s human nature. It comes from making inept appointments, in an inept organisational structure.
Since a management style has been established that sidelines criticism by applying naked power unchecked, change will only occur if and when there is a sense of real crisis. I would have preferred it to be an internal crisis, brought on by a ‘rebellion’ here, about censorship or communication, rather than something that puts volunteers in a Thai jail, or leaves surfers stranded all over the globe should the site go down (again).
But I no longer hope for the ‘internal crisis’ option. Non-communication from above, most noticeably from Casey (the only voice that counts), and the resulting tedious repetitiveness of criticism, has left people with nothing else to talk about than each other, and that seems to have worked regrettably well. All are at each other’s throats, and blaming each other for it too. The issues fade.
It’s like the man shouting: “Move, Liz! Car coming!” and she replies: “Not in this tone, Henry!”
Copied with Pickwick’s permission
We used to get the excuse “Casey is too busy”. Now we get the excuse “The LT is too busy“. This begs the question, too busy doing what?
CouchSurfing now has 4 full time, paid members of staff. That’s a 300% increase in professional resources within the organisation. What exactly are all these professionals doing?
Here’s a few things they’re not doing which they could be doing.
Perhaps they’re too busy partying, having threesomes, burning da man, banning people from the wiki, spreading the verification disease, etc. Who knows eh? 
I just found this gem of a quote from Jim Stone on Wikis:
The Wiki is meant for EVERYONE to edit and not a place where permission is needed. I loved this kind of info and was glad to see more discussion about what needs to be understood by more people and then actually seeing it going somewhere. The Wiki is the end-all destination but it certainly is a step in the right direction.
In Brainstorm Christian announced a page with links to external tools for CouchSurfing members:
I wonder how far this approach can be taken though…
Now I’m trying to get the profile export tool somewhere in a public space, so that it can be added.
I just got back from my travels, so I want to change the couch status on my CouchSurfing profile. Unfortunately I’m getting a lot of…
503 Service Unavailable
No server is available to handle this request.
I hope this will be quickly resolved. Still, funny how this technical issue coincides with CS’s dodgy legal status.
An addition, after some complaints about this blog post, which is, I contend, a bit silly on its own…
The dodgy legal status of CS is related to the financial situation. A 501(c)(3) status means paying less tax, and complete transparency (if a politician in San Francisco can make his Quicken books public, in real-time, why not CS?).
And it’s clear how finances and server issues are related. The time and money Casey spent on partying with Jim on his birthday (and renting a limo) would have been better invested in server hardware and maintenance.
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