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The Death of Couchsurfing?

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Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#91

Post by julianeon »

MattGaiser wrote: post #18
peterburkimsher wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how Hacker News manages to stay so pure, given that it's run by venture capitalists, yet still remains free of ads and open to newcomers. Monetising CS is like demanding a signup fee to join HN: it will drastically change the community.

Hacker News is smaller than most major subreddits in terms of usage. 400 upvotes is considered a lot here. The site is extremely simple and something that could be replicated in a couple of days at most by most engineers. It doesn't process money or really require a lot of content moderation either.

> The site is extremely simple and something that could be replicated in a couple of days at most by most engineers.

I'm a little skeptical of this. Don't get me wrong, I understand that it's not going to win any ACM awards for innovation in web development - it's a simple web app. I know this. But I think it's well beyond the 2-day prototype mark.

Because I know what a cheapo off-the-shelf, 2-day-product or PHP forum feels like, and Hacker News doesn't feel like that. It's a little more fine-grained and thoughtful than that.

The design, and probably countless little feature improvements that take time to make: I think these have accreted over time, a tiny bit at a time. And for what it's worth, getting comments to nest (stored in DB, parent, child, child of child etc.) and then to show that correctly in the UI isn't quite as easy as people who haven't attempted it might think.

And then things like downvoted comments being faded, next page loading at screen bottom, setting up the API... it all adds up.

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#93

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

Bro.. you gotta pay $15 a year. That's $1.25/month.

I would like to see you make a website like Couchsurfing that can operate for free forever.

Just pay the $buck 25 and keep using the site and go on with your life. This is not a Capitalist Conspiracy to rob you of your hard-earned $dollars

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#94

Post by gnicholas »

DanielleMolloy wrote: post #58
vvpan wrote: post #48

An aside: Why does Medium add a login wall to some articles? Creating an account on a website to read somebody's blog post to me sounds... excessive.

We’ve been considering moving our labs‘ blog there (because less maintenance, higher visibility in tech academic communities) and have been wondering about this too. Can someone comment? Are they aiming towards raising a login wall for the whole platform?

You can make all your articles free/unpaywalled if you want. But then if a publication wants to add your article, they can’t. Only paywalled articles can be added to publications.

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#95

Post by rodgerd »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #9
MattGaiser wrote: post #7

>If community powered websites like Reddit can survive Reddit is backed by venture capital and shifted heavily to be more advertiser friendly.

I don't know how Hacker News manages to stay so pure, given that it's run by venture capitalists, yet still remains free of ads and open to newcomers. Monetising CS is like demanding a signup fee to join HN: it will drastically change the community.

It's a loss-leader for the owners.

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#96

Post by peterburkimsher »

owenversteeg wrote: post #74
joshfraser wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couchsurfing has had an incredibly positive impact on my life as well. I've made a lot of lifelong friends and learned a lot about the world and different cultures through the people I've met. The app is atrocious and barely usable, but the community is terrific. More than anything, Couchsurfing taught me wonderful things can happen when you embrace serendipity. Couchsurfing is an important antidote to a world that s…

Yeah, that's the really wonderful thing about Couchsurfing. It's a whole web of beautiful trust. People in the first world are scared of strangers by default: Couchsurfing flips that on its head. Although I still try to stay safe, I now generally trust strangers and it's made my life so much richer. Paradoxically, trusting strangers has also made my life safer. In Armenia, I met an old woman who then helped me get th…

The community is already coming together to rebuild. The CS meetup in Auckland is rebranding as BeWelcome. Kaohsiung is discussing it.

I'm sad that all those good memories will be tinged with pain by this betrayal, but it's given me a good reason to get back in touch with old friends, and invite them to BW. I wholeheartedly agree with your descriptions of CS and trusting strangers; you've had some great stories!

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#97

Post by bigiain »

MattGaiser wrote: post #26
freddie_mercury wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is all true but the real answer is that it is run as a charity project by billionaires. So it doesn't need to be monetized.

They probably source enough engineers on here to make it more bait rather than charity.

There are very few billionaire charity projects that don't have some kind of bait stench associated with them...

This site is a lot less brazen that, say the Gates Foundation or Jack Dorseys "all the strings attached" charity "donations", but there's no doubt it's run in the interests of YC and they're doing it for the benefits they get.

Not that I begrudge them that. It just needs to be something you bear in mind when wondering about odd looking article rankings or apparent voting/submission patterns that evade the fraud detection... It's their space, they can do that if they want. I (and everyone else) needs to weight up the benefit to themselves against the benefit to the people in control, and determine whether to hang around here, or walk away. For me? They do an OK job of not taking too m much advantage of their ultimate power here. I'm mostly cool with them.

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#98

Post by peterburkimsher »

h0l0cube wrote: post #90
peterburkimsher wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trustroots is being discussed as an alternative, but it doesn't have a reference system. I trust the reference system to keep the platform clear from the safety issues you describe. That's why I think BeWelcome is the best alternative to recommend right now. Servers cost money, and BeWelcome are transparent about that. Having developers to code the site and moderate the forum would be expensive if paid by the hour, b…

> Trustroots is being discussed as an alternative, but it doesn't have a reference system I logged in just earlier to have a look, and I see that people do have feedback. I'm not sure if there's anything like 'vouching' that CS used to have. > Having developers to code the site and moderate the forum would be expensive if paid by the hour, but there are willing volunteers. I have been to a festival in Australia (the…

I agree that losing references is a big problem. Thanks to GDPR you can request an export. https://www.couchsurfing.com/preferences/privacy

If that fails, you can also contact me - my account is Taiwan-registered and still has full access. I can save your references, photos, and friends list, but not your private messages.

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#99

Post by stormdennis »

owenversteeg wrote: post #45

So I imagine there's a lot of people here that don't know Couchsurfing or what the big deal is. Couchsurfing has been one of the most important things in my life, so I'll do my best to explain why it's so special. The basic idea is you stay at a stranger's place, or you host a stranger at yours - completely for free, no money involved. Everyone does it differently. Some people plan their trip meticulously months in a…

Have there been any cases where something bad has happened to either a host or a guest? (Such are the thoughts that consume my middle aged mind, I think I was more trusting when younger but never to the extent that you are). BTW, I think your attitude is great.

Re: The Death of Couchsurfing?

#100

Post by bigiain »

h0l0cube wrote: post #90
peterburkimsher wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trustroots is being discussed as an alternative, but it doesn't have a reference system. I trust the reference system to keep the platform clear from the safety issues you describe. That's why I think BeWelcome is the best alternative to recommend right now. Servers cost money, and BeWelcome are transparent about that. Having developers to code the site and moderate the forum would be expensive if paid by the hour, b…

> Trustroots is being discussed as an alternative, but it doesn't have a reference system I logged in just earlier to have a look, and I see that people do have feedback. I'm not sure if there's anything like 'vouching' that CS used to have. > Having developers to code the site and moderate the forum would be expensive if paid by the hour, but there are willing volunteers. I have been to a festival in Australia (the…

> I have been to a festival in Australia (the predecessor to burning man) that is completely volunteer run. It's interesting to be a part of operations and see it work, and fail to some extent, and in meat-space the 'look after each other philosophy' can work when everybody is can watch each other.

I'm curious about that (being an Australian and a Burner).

Which festival? (if you're OK sharing. My email in my profile works if you're OK sharing but not as widely as publishing it here...)

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