Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am a couchers host in NYC and don't actually get too many requests! I host someone about once or twice a month.
How’s your towel design?
Terrible but worth it for the location
Couchers is officially out of beta
111–120 of 139 posts
Re: Couchers is officially out of beta
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
God I hate the GDPR with a passion. The amount of time I've wasted clicking those stupid popups.
That hate is entirely misguided, and an indication of how far you’re been tricked by the ones violating your data. It’s as if companies had been pissing in your beer for decades, then a law passed saying you could only do that with consent, and now you’re complaining that there are all these consent forms every time you want to drink your pissed beer instead of taking it as an indicator to buy from another brand. If…
There should be a browser setting that just answers yes/no for you. Not an extension, or a hack. A setting that is read on page load and doesn't interrupt me.
Re: Couchers is officially out of beta
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
That hate is entirely misguided, and an indication of how far you’re been tricked by the ones violating your data. It’s as if companies had been pissing in your beer for decades, then a law passed saying you could only do that with consent, and now you’re complaining that there are all these consent forms every time you want to drink your pissed beer instead of taking it as an indicator to buy from another brand. If…
I disagree with the framing of "pissing in beer". To me it's more like companies have been giving me hot coffee for decades and now every time I get one they have to tell me, "careful! It's hot!" Like, yeah, I know, just give me the dang coffee.
Everyone wants hot coffee. If you hadn’t been getting hot coffee in the past, you’d have asked for it, but if you hadn’t been getting your data mined (or piss in your beer) you might not have noticed but would’ve been better off if it hadn’t happened.
Furthermore, temperature is an essential feature of coffee, so under the GDPR you don’t need to tell or ask users about it. Piss and data mining are not essential features.
So websites are already serving you hot coffee (or cold beer) but then saying “I really really really want to piss in your drink, please allow it”. Previously they just pissed without asking. Which is why the mandatory warning is useful, it immediately signals they are pissers and you should probably go somewhere else. Especially when you click to see their “partners” and it’s a list of literally eight hundred entities wanting to pee in your drink.
Re: Couchers is officially out of beta
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Couchers Frontend Team Lead here. Aapeli is out for the night so I'm popping in to answer from my POV. I think the main difference is that we're trying to capture the spirit of what CouchSurfing.com used to be: modern, easy to use, welcoming to newbies and centered on genuine social connection. But we also want to go beyond that. Build for today’s world—with better safety tools, better moderation, and more community-…
I cannot select England, Northern Ireland, Great Britain ... as a visited region. Those countries are not listed.
No United Kingdom?
Re: Couchers is officially out of beta
#115Re: Couchers is officially out of beta
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Couchers Frontend Team Lead here. Aapeli is out for the night so I'm popping in to answer from my POV. I think the main difference is that we're trying to capture the spirit of what CouchSurfing.com used to be: modern, easy to use, welcoming to newbies and centered on genuine social connection. But we also want to go beyond that. Build for today’s world—with better safety tools, better moderation, and more community-…
so couchers focus on better UI and new tech? why not join efforts with bewellcome? or are they too "democratic" and not everyone sees new tech and better UI as major improvement? curious where this new road will lead surfers.
Part of it is the better UI and new tech, but there's a lot more too.
Just on that point though: there's actually another open-source platform called Trustroots. They initally started as a rewrite of the BeWelcome frontend, but because of politics and such, BW never let them merge those big changes, so they spun off. Trustroots is a cool project but I think they swung too far into the realm of anarchism in their vibe both as a platform (they are very hitchhikey, so their moderation model is extremely hands off) and as a project (they have this things called a "do-ocracy"). We think there needs to be some planning and roadmapping and a healthy mix of dev + non-dev, as well as serious moderation to keep the platform safe.
Re: Couchers is officially out of beta
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is just hospitality reviews 101. I run a couple of Airbnbs in the uk - 99.9% of guests leave gushing reviews, 0.01% break open locked cupboards and are like “There was a cupboard FULL of cleaning supplies! Disgusting! 1/5!”. I’ve even had people bring a plastic rat with them and pose it around the apartment to then complain to customer service - successfully. That one cost me about £5,000 in a refund, lost reven…
Some people are just plain...weird? I was reading reviews of some book on Amazon (can't remember which one now). Someone gave the book a one star review, because "it was delivered two days later than it was promised" while simultaneously saying they haven't read the book. How is it the book's/author's fault that Amazon delivered the book late? Why are they giving lowest rating for a book without even reading it? None…
In that case, the reviewer seems to have completely misunderstood the subject of the review. That's a fine review (I guess) if the subject of the review is Amazon and the purchasing/delivery experience. Of course, it would be obvious from reading the review that it's not useful to somebody looking for book reviews and it should be (re)moved, but for whatever reason we have accepted platforms such as Amazon will simply fail to handle it properly.
Re: Couchers is officially out of beta
#118I hosted couchsurfers and it was fun, but i stopped when i started getting detailed reviews about random shit about my home after people left. Letting people live in your house in the central business district of a top tier city and then having them comment on your towel designs. It’s not a hotel. I’m so over it.
"He has the ugliest towels I have ever seen! I still have nightmares about them! 1 star!"
You jest, but if you encountered towels with print of the logo of a programming language you detest?...
Re: Couchers is officially out of beta
#119I hosted couchsurfers and it was fun, but i stopped when i started getting detailed reviews about random shit about my home after people left. Letting people live in your house in the central business district of a top tier city and then having them comment on your towel designs. It’s not a hotel. I’m so over it.
(I'm the Couchers co-founder who wrote this blog post.)
Yes I agree, CouchSurfing.com went to shit through a slow process of enshittification that ended up looking like this. That's exactly why we founded Couchers.org when CouchSurfing.com put up a paywall (it was the last straw for us). We're trying to take what Couchsurfing was at its best and go further. We're solving these issues you're talking about with better moderation, better safety tools, and nudging users to behave in a way that's best for the community, etc.
I think it comes down to setting clear expectations and educating users about what it is and what it's not. We try to make it very clear and then enforce those rules very carefully. Once this happens, it's surprising how quickly the community roots out that behavior.
Re: Couchers is officially out of beta
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Couchers Frontend Team Lead here. Aapeli is out for the night so I'm popping in to answer from my POV. I think the main difference is that we're trying to capture the spirit of what CouchSurfing.com used to be: modern, easy to use, welcoming to newbies and centered on genuine social connection. But we also want to go beyond that. Build for today’s world—with better safety tools, better moderation, and more community-…
I cannot select England, Northern Ireland, Great Britain ... as a visited region. Those countries are not listed.
Send a bug report and we'll add them!