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Usual suspects

Published by on 16 August 2007 at 23:09 in couchsurfing, Leadership Circle, networks, Open Source, Participation, people and Transparency. Closed Tags: , , , , .

Being off the grid has its benefits ;) however I couldn’t help but responding to the thread below – where “negativity” is once again being shut down and anyone who is even remotely associated with “heretic” views is actively being marginalized.

“as apparently one of “them”… all I have to say I have said elsewhere (see below).

For a quick read (online time is scarce these days) I can’t help but agreeing with Pickwick – this call for positivity is starting to sound a bit too cult-like to me. Also, how can you claim you know “those guys” hate CS? Have you actually talked with them about why they volunteered for CS in the first place? What aspects of CS they do enjoy, and why? Have you asked why they stuck by while being treated like shit? Would you have done the same, if received the same treatment, repeatedly?

For me personally, I would have left long ago IF I didn’t care about what this community still stands for for me. The fact that I’m still somewhat involved (the thread is getting thinner, just in case you haven’t noticed) is because I still have all the faith in the community, if not the leadership.

Anu
PS. yes it IS starting to feel like a waste of my time to keep kicking this particular dead horse, so perhaps you can all “be positive” soon enough :P (thankfully there are other projects where some critical thinking is actually welcome, and responded to with due respect, and where *gasp* even Kasper’s input is more than appropriate!)
————————————————
Current opinion of CS:
It’s an adventure machine, and a world full of friends I haven’t met yet! I cherish the CS community, which is full of amazing people and hope to meet many more of them on the remaining paths of my trip.

BUT after a year of volunteering I can say I’m not happy of the current events: seeing CS disregarding its culturally diverse member base (with a non-American majority) and entertaining values of the American corporate culture. Although my belief in the community itself is strong, I don’t share this view on the way CS is currently lead. Feel free to disagree, or take the red pill…

www.opencouchsurfing.org/2007/08/14/hc-might-soon-be-open-so…
Anu Aug 15th, 2007 at 3:52 pm

Along the same lines here – for me it was never about open source (though by seeing the most recent standpoints of CS, I do tend to agree more and more with OCS views), but about overall fairness and openness in policies and decision-making. So I would not just blindly jump onto HC or any other organization that does not actively address these issues.”

Volunteer coordinator handling a serious privacy issue – or not?

Published by on 16 August 2007 at 12:21 in CouchSurfing Wiki, Member Rights, Participation and Volunteer coordinator. 1 Comment

bentivogli found out about a serious privacy issue in the CouchSurfing system. He reported it on August 10th. Apparently anyone on the internet can see who is interested in who on CS. And password resets. Here’s an (anonymized) excerpt:

* D did interesting_user to D (20070816070640)
* P did interesting_user to I (20070816070517)
* G did interesting_user to G (20070816070453)
* S did interesting_user to E (20070816070117)
* c did interesting_user to c (20070816070104)
* B did password reset to B (20070816065925)
* M did interesting_user to T (20070816065628)
* M did interesting_user to L (20070816065410)
* T did interesting_user to COUCHSURFING SYSTEM (20070816065307)

(Note that people find themselves very interesting.)

The CouchSurfing volunteer coordinator (2000 US$/month), who should be able to fix this in 10 minutes, respond on August 15th:

Basically, I’d need to do what you should have done and go post it myself in the bug tracker. That’s not really efficient for anyone. Also, since only one other person has bothered on discussing this it’s not likely to be changed. I’d suggest to wait and see if anyone else supports this idea and go from there. I don’t personally see a problem with it, myself.

I’m sure that the CS VC doesn’t see a problem, since he can read the messages of all CouchSurfers, so he’s not very used to people fathoming their privacy. But I’m sure his attitude will lead to herds of new volunteers posting stuff in the bug tracker, or removing spam on the CouchSurfing wiki. Yay for efficiency for anyone!

HC might soon be open source!?

Published by on 14 August 2007 at 11:00 in Hospitality Club, Open Source and Participation. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

I read the news today oh, boy! HC might soon be open source!

I’m really excited. I have been somewhat disappointed about certain policies in the past (?). But I appreciated the frankness of Veit and other HC people. I never felt to volunteer for HC before. However, opening up the source could also open up a lot of possibilities. To solidify the legal framework of HC, to create stronger links and share code between the different networks. Of course there are many more implications, but let’s see and wait how it turns out. I always wanted to help out many different initiatives, so in the meanwhile I already offered my help on the HC forum.

I never got my application in

Published by on 10 August 2007 at 11:41 in employees and Participation. 8 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

On August 2nd, Couchsurfing Announced that they were looking to hire a full time developer. I look back today (August 10th) and I notice that:

***We Are No Longer Accepting Applications***

I’m not sure what day they posted this notice, but it seems a very short period of time to advertise a vacancy. I always suspected that announcing this was just to escape criticism about “hiring all of Casey’s friends”. I guess soon we will get to see who the developer is, and if it is indeed a familiar face.

Reviving an idea – Rideshare

Published by on 08 August 2007 at 16:24 in Collective, Crash at Mine, Open Source and volunteer coordination. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , .

During the CouchSurfing Collective in New Zealand several people had been working on a rideshare system. Unfortunately the CS volunteering environment is (was?) not the right place to do this. So I was happy when Meinhard today wrote something about a rideshare system in a chat. “Imagine a “lifts to Trento” box on your homepage!” For this we need to create some stuff:

We decided to put it at the Crash at Mine wiki, because it’s open, available under a free license and, well, Morgan is a laid back Ozzie. In the future we’ll probably have to move it elsewhere though, somehow Crash at Mine doesn’t seem appropriate for a rideshare system ;)


Open = Anti?

Published by on 08 August 2007 at 15:26 in CouchSurfing Wiki, Culture of Appreciation and Volunteer coordinator. Closed

I really appreciate Jim Stone‘s frankness. But frankly, I wonder who is keeping up with the negativity here, by twisting words and ideas.

That’s probably true. Did you do this for everyone that is not very active (or simply inactive) on this Wiki or only people associated with OpenCouchSurfing.org? As an aside, I have to say I’m a bit shocked to see you consider it your right to make that decision all by yourself without any type of communication. Maybe you don’t see the problem with such arbitrary actions, but I surely do. –Tgoorden 12:48, 7 August 2007 (EDT)
Yes, the conflict of interest regarding your active affiliation with an anti-CS website was taken into consideration but was not the full reason as I stated already. Thanks for your opinion. –RedCouchGuy 13:35, 7 August 2007 (EDT)

I still think that the CouchSurfing Leadership Team knows the difference between the concepts open and anti.  But it worries me that they mix them up so easily. I think that everyone involved in OpenCS is doing this because they love CouchSurfing as a community. (Its members, the activity of meeting, hosting and staying with them.) I am involved in OpenCS because I cannot accept a Leadership that bullies its (former and current) volunteers around like this, not as a (former) volunteer, nor as a member.

More CouchSurfing Censorship

Published by Callum on 06 August 2007 at 19:32 in CouchSurfing Wiki, employees and Volunteer coordinator. 10 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Not content with blocking Kasper from the Wiki for a week, Jim Stone has now made the block indefinite. Furthermore, he has removed sysop (admin) rights from myself, Phauly, Tgoorden, and Calum (not me, another one!).

It seems that Jim wants to keep all the power for himself. No longer will he be sharing his Wiki admin rights with us mere CouchSurfing Corporation Customers, no, no, no. He’s a paid member of staff now, he’s special… :)

It’s a little ironic, I was thinking about unblocking Kasper from the Wiki, but I decided it would be better to try and talk it out with Jim. With hindsight, perhaps that was a mistake. Jim apparently ain’t one for talking.

Some “facts” about the CouchSurfing Wiki

Published by on 06 August 2007 at 16:04 in CouchSurfing Wiki, Culture of Appreciation, employees, volunteer coordination and Volunteer coordinator. 3 Comments
  • 22:10, 11 August 2006 Guaka founded the CouchSurfing Wiki
  • There have been a total of 1,873,399 page views, and 24,441 page edits since the wiki was setup. That comes to 5.37 average edits per page, and 76.65 views per edit.
  • Guaka made 5032 edits
  • Guaka got paid 0 US$ (and spent 999 US$ on a now broken laptop, and almost 1000 US$ on transport to and from Collectives)
  • a dozen of them were related to moving content to another website where it is more at its place
  • 18:01, 3 August 2007 RedCouchGuy (Talk | contribs) (blocked “User:Guaka” with an expiry time of infinite: blanking 20+ pages and replacing them with links to another website – spam)
  • Up to today RedCouchGuy made 218 edits
  • RedCouchGuy gets 2000 US$ per month for doing this

From a BeWelcome volunteer

Published by on 06 August 2007 at 12:20 in BeWelcome, Donations, Participation and Transparency. Closed Tags: , , , .

I was just reading the BeVolunteer forum and I was happy to read lemon-head’s post about the BW mission and objectives. Here’s a part of that. Of course I was especially pleased with the remark between brackets.

No interest in organisation politics?

It was said that the ordinary CouchSurfing or Hospitality Club member doesn’t care about the legal structure of the organisation behind.

I agree that most members will choose a hospex site mainly based on the chances to find a host etc. However, as soon as volunteering or donations are involved, at least some people will start thinking. For me this was the point where I started to become interested in the legal structure of couchsurfing and hospitalityclub. Later a talk with some CS people mentioned BeWelcome, and I felt pushed to read more about it and find information from external sources (opencouchsurfing, at first).

2000 US$/month

Published by on 06 August 2007 at 10:25 in Donations, Leadership Circle, volunteer coordination and Volunteer coordinator. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

From Jim Stone Aug 4 Met in person

Extremely Negative

I once thought Kasper was able to separate friendship from business and keep things professional. I was wrong. Friends don’t routinely bash each other personally in public and scream “you’re a f*cking asshole!” in public forums. I should have known better, but Kasper will do whatever it takes to push his twisted agenda. He’ll demand special treatment and then cry when he doesn’t get his way. Beware – this man will stab you in the back after he borrows the knife from you. In his own words ( http://www.couchsurfing.com/group_read.html?gid=3886&post=304127 ): “I don’t know what I’m trying to achieve. But I’m not stopping.”

Thanks Jim. How do you seperate friendship and business now that you get 2000 US$ a month to coordinate volunteers?