I've been perusing the forum, and the descriptions of the major Hosp orgs. IMO, it seems like there is a slight bias to favor CS, and more strongly chastise HC.


Here's the (completely public) domain info for hospitalityguide.net:

owner-contact: hidden
owner-fname: hidden
owner-lname: hidden
owner-street: hidden
owner-city: hidden
owner-zip: hidden
owner-country: hidden
owner-phone: hidden
owner-email: hidden


Who is this person, and does he/do you have any affiliation whatsoever with either CS, HC, or any of the other Hosp sites? Most of CS's founders are Yanks, but there's also a strong European contingent.

How do we know you haven't formed this site as a "front", to help drive traffic, and opinions, to favor a particular Hosp site?

Web hosts form fake, "impartial" host review sites all the time, but then magically rank the host from which the phony review site was birthed, at the top of every survey. So they're hardly "impartial"; most hosting review sites are totally phony fronts for specific web hosts.

What assurance does any reader of this site have, that that's not the case here?

CS is run from the top down, with near zero transparency, by Casey Fenton. Similar to how Veit runs HC. That CS "pretends" to present a more open face, is meaningless. It's pure PR, and not very effective at that. (On CS) the same fundamental site bugs have existed for weeks/months on end, some of them major, and despite frequent member feedback and requests, most still remain. And rarely will a member receive any kind of feedback about comments posted.

Casey's Clique obviously believes they're more "slick", than Veit. So recently they've been attacking and testing HC, like in the spam filtering test. Perhaps someone secretly associated with CS set-up this "review" site.

Reading between the lines, it almost seems like a battle of ego's between Casey and Veit. Both would prefer that their own site become dominant and more popular. And like another anon' writer wrote, an ulterior motive for both, might be to build up the largest user base possible, and profit somehow. Either through ad's, clicks, or the like. On CS, many members spent months pleading for Casey to remove an auto-link "feature", that automatically converted items listed in the profile section, "Movies, Music, Books" to direct links to Amazon.

The hot area on the Web scene today, is social networks. Facebook, MySpace, and their junior wannabe's, the Hosp clubs. So if you can use emotional appeal to build the largest user base possible, you can also make a significant profit. Google-ads, Amazon links, etc. "Non profit", doesn't mean Casey doesn't collect a fat salary.

Here are are some current complaints about CS:
http://thecouchsurfingbuilding2.hyperboards.com

This is mostly a meandering "bitch session", with purely anon' postings, and borderline conspiracy theories. But it's still a wealth of insight into the cult-of-personality that CS has become.

If CS and HC still connect people that want to travel and communicate to facilitate that travel, that's a great thing. But from reading, it seems both sites are having some fairly significant technical shortcomings. If on HC, because of Veit's paranoia about CS, messages are getting stalled in an overbearing censorship mechanism, then the site isn't serving it's fundamental purpose. On CS, the servers are just plain "down" from 2-4 times every week. Or messages never arrive. Similar result.

Both Casey and Veit need to stop thinking profit and advantage and opportunity, and start thinking about how to make their respective babies as genuinely useful and reliable for the most people possible.

Edit: I did hide the information, everybody interested can look it up themselves. -a

Thanks ? for joining this page.

It was me founding the page. I would recommend you, and everybody else, to reading through the whole site and also the associated mailing list to get all the insight and history about this website, and also to get an idea about the time line and the at this time ongoing discussions and developments.

Some years back, there was only 'big' HC and CS with a couple of members. CS was the first good possibility to give people a choice, to decide where they want to go and what they want, even knowing that it isn't the best solution.

At the beginning Casey still put the finances open, as Veit never did. Casey showed more openness to cooperate with other networks, Veit never wanted. There was some more integration of the members in CS then on HC, the response and feedback was also a lot better. Out of this might come the bias favoring CS. But yes, recently, there are things developing in a way which isn't nice and in both networks is the big lack of transparency.

I favored for political reasons, to get some equilibrium of the big networks (also there wasn't much other choice). I never got deeply involved on CS or any other network. I don't like to be associated, it makes it difficult to have some critical eye on ongoing developments. I chose to try to change and influence from the outside, not from the inside.

Some people might turn it down and see it as bitching around, some private war, to aggrandize oneself or just as unproductive. I think and hope the project here, HospEx Ne>t, shows that it is more than this. The central idea of HospitalityExchange stands in the middle, everybody which thinks like that, has here on HospEx Ne>t the possibility to be productive, organize and work on this without limits.

Yes, social networks are the present and will still be it for some time.

'The ranking of the networks is based on the editorial part of Hosp.Ex Ne>t (although it isn't up to date right now anymore and needs some attention) and that is the special thing about Hosp.Ex Ne>t. On the Wiki and here on the forum are some public discussions about how we could create and use some objective measurement in the rating. Also ideas and thoughts from the Wiki (wich is open to everybody and I also tell everybody, who states fore example that here is false information on Hosp.Ex Ne>t, to edit instead to complain) can be taken over into this and we are very open to all ideas and points made. But as we had quite bad experiences with information out Wikis and given on the Networks [...], we decided for the editorial team who stands behind the given information, so everybody can judge about it themselves. We hope that we can expand this 'expertise' in the future.' (31.08.). I would also like to make more contact with the founders of the small networks, to talk about their future plans. Also the (ongoing) development of a new open source solution might become quite interesting in the future.

Every critical hand is welcome.

Alex

thanks to Alex, whom i have met personnaly and can say was a great host for me, we now have a place on the web free from all hospitality networks in which discussions by members can take place to express feelings, ideas, emotions and complaints or pointers about all networks...

what will come of this site? well for me it is the possibility for brainstorming on a concept....hospitality is not just about websites, its an idea and can exists without websites...

maybe through sites like this we can see that maybe there needs to be a new approach to hospitality exchange....who knows, all that is clear that here, one can be honest and talk freely

cheers alex, keep up the good work,

and im happy to help if you need some time from me.

james eldridge, riga, latvia

From my understanding, people actively posting on this forum are(and for many of us, it seems, were) active in the HC, but got quite let down by and fed up wtih the bureaucracy and closed-mindedness of the HC, and turned to this page, where you can talk freely.
So, you are quite wrong if you thought we were bunch of the CS and Casey PR team and this site was created for that purpose.
And yes, I would repeat too that it is thanks to Alex we have a space free from their politics to discuss.

And, you should wake up. There´s always some degree of cult-worshipping, everywhere in our world. In any organization - espeically if created by certain individual - you always find some people who like following charismatic leader. You know what, it is those people, who like to be led and adore something grand, who create charismatic leader.
I see that in the CS too - in fact, why should the CS be exception from all the human relations in everyday life? It annoyes me some times too. But let them be, that´s how they want it. You can have your opinion and they theirs. (Or else, who are you to tell them what is right and wrong, and to regulate their life and tell them how to live?)


And I personally don´t care if Casey collects fat salary from the site - though I doubt running the CS as it is is that much profitable. He and his team created quite a wonderful project, and I had great experiences. Well, if he is clever enough to collect money from some web companies - and not from the members he is "collecting the fat salary" - while providing us with his project, so what on earth is wrong with that? What do you expect? He has to eat and he needs money to run the webpage as well. Don´t you have bigger evil than Casey, someone who collect bigger money than Casey with much less favourable project? I mean, if you think it is wrong what he does, well, first of all you never have to give your money to the CS unless you want to(so what are you complaining?) and second of all why don´t you speak up in the CS? I don´t think the CS forum is moderated... is it?
By the way, Casey had numerous chance to commercialize the CS - to collect bigger profit and professionalize it - and I know the CS had been contacted by advertising companies many times, but he didn´t.
That goes same for Veit too (though I am not familiar with how the HC is anymore), as far as my understanding goes.

I involved with the CS a bit (and I am a "CS Ambassador") only because, after my experience at the HC, the CS seemed more transparent and open. I didn´t care if it was CS or HC or anything else, I only am helping the project I like, I wanted to help other members, and I just happened to prefer CS more than other ones.
And really, most of what the CS Ambassadors do is more like a telephone centre work Practically, we are supposed to send greetings to new members, and answer practical questions by members (mostly how to use the webpage and how to change their profile and all that).

But it is true, the CS starts confusing many people, including me. Questions raised aren´t answered quite frequently by the Admins. The site is down often as well (but I am technologically-challenged and I would just let other people figure out this mystery ) I don´t know where it is going. But I certainly don´t involve in their politics and I don´t defend the CS if I know it is going in the wrong direction - I´d rather not stay there, if it goes in the wrong direction. I don´t have time to read all the inside stories or the "conspiracy theories",though.
Meanwhile, it is still a great project, and I will just see what happens.

Satoshi