r/couchsurfing

I’ve hosted a few people a couple of times, but now they’re coming back to my city every month or two and asking to stay again.

At some point it stops feeling like Couchsurfing and starts feeling like I’m their regular free accommodation especially when they never host anyone themselves.

Anyone else had this?

I came across a comment from u/Neat-Coconut6892 asking another Reddit user: “What would make you happy with the platform?”

So I thought I would make a list of things that would make me happy. Who knows? Maybe Mike will read this and implement some of them.

(Yes, I know, I know: I'm a dreamer...)

Anyway, here's my list (in random order). Please feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments. If I like them, I'll edit the list accordingly.

• Be transparent about the actual number of active users, as Couchers and BeWelcome are.
• Remove the enoooooormous number of inactive accounts (as Couchers and BeWelcome do).
• Define what “recently” actually means in “recently active”. How recent is “recently”? Last week? Last month? 2 years ago?
• ... Or, even better, restore the “last login” information. (By the way, we all know why they removed it...)
• Restore the response rate, which was a crucial piece of information for Couchsurfers looking for a host.
• Stop treating every user as an active host by default, including people who haven't logged in for years.
• Clearly state which countries are still free to use Couchsurfing (if any) and which ones require a subscription.
• Restore the Hosting Calendar.
• Remove the absurd character limits on both hosting requests and replies.
• Fix the photo-display problems introduced by the latest redesign.
• Stop forcing users to create a “public trip” in order to send a hosting request. Publishing a "public trip" should be an explicit, voluntary choice, and not an accidental side effect of sending a couch request.
• Only post "public trips" with precise travel dates. Knowing that someone plans to visit a city “sometime next month” is not really useful to hosts.
• Stop promoting Couchsurfing as a dating/hookup opportunity. Advertising the possibility of finding love on the platform attracts the wrong crowd.
• Start treating the community with respect (as Couchers and BeWelcome do).
• Stop creating fake profiles for promotional material.
• Get rid of the event database used to populate "fake" events that nobody on CS has organized
• Fix the numerous bugs that still affect the platform, including issues such as the one u/CyberLeekForever posted about a few days ago.
• If someone is banned without prior warning, have the basic courtesy to explain why.

Obviously, this list is far from exhaustive. I'm probably forgetting many things...

Mike, if you're reading this (and haven't been fired yet): here's your free product-development roadmap. You're welcome.

I am in a reasonably sized city. I got a request for a hangout from someone who was surprised that I was in the city nearby and not the city they were in. They had also joined a hangout with another person that was also in my city, but even further from him. We didn't hangout since we're not close to each other. That was yesterday.

Today I was looking at the map and I'm showing as being a few km away from where I actually am (but not enough to appear in a different city). It's showing me as being in a hiking area that I was at more than 24h ago. It's also showing the hangout with the other two guys that was started more than a day ago. It shows both of their profiles. But then it shows the solo profile of the guy who made the hangout as being in the neighbouring city, but when you click on it, it shows as being a deleted user.

So at this point it seems that nothing about hangouts can be trusted. My location is not updating after more than a full day. Is my location showing to others the same as I see? Are their locations accurate? Are hangouts perpetually active?

Hangouts is all I ever used CS for and it seems like it might be completely broken along with everything else.

I see "Very Likely to Recommend" etc attached to some references, but when I leave a reference, I don't have that option.

This is for a guest who stayed months ago (I'm just catching up on references now) and I can't remember if we confirmed the stay through the site – maybe that's the issue?

Any suggestions