Or we could have their community standing score! 
That might encourage people to choose people further out if all the inner city people have lower scores, haha. Somehow I bet it does correlate…
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I was thinking of something similar. A section somewhere on the page of looking for a host in a certain city to promote hosts from smaller cities, villages around that city, especially promoting people who have filled all the fields in their profile and have “I can host” status (so they are probably more motivated to be a good host and more encourage travelers to get off the touristic hubs of huge cities). So it could possible encourage some travelers to especially go to visit this small city/village to visit these hosts. It might at least a bit increase a chance of participation people from smaller/non touristic towns and also lower the super-host effect. It’d be probably the most optimal to have this section visible only on desktop version of the site.
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If the APIs of OpenStreetMaps were not taken already into consideration, maybe it can be a good idea to use OpenStreetMaps instead of Google Maps 
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Yep, we are going with OpenStreetMaps, these days it’s excellent and we don’t need the expensively advanced features of Google.
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I had a bad experience with the map option in TR. At some point I realized it was showing way to close to my real address, I mean: in a spot I walk by 4 times a day. It’s creepy and I don’t feel safe. Any spot 400mts around my home I walk by every day, so: 400mts randomization is not enough. Maybe just divide the people by neighborhoods or areas of xx km²?
I see you are suggesting the option of not showing it, but: it took me months to realize that in TR because after signing in I didn’t really look for myself on the map, so I assume lots of people will be disclosing their addresses by accident as I did.
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In case nobody thought about this yet, why not simply allow members to pin their own location on the map wherever they want? Isn’t this the most obvious solution? If one wants to pin the exact location of its house then is able to do it, if one wants to pin the location at 400 meters, 1 km or 100 km from its house, is able to do it. Isn’t it better to allow members to decide for themselves where exactly they want to show up on the map? To me this seems the best instead of complicating things with randomization and similar.
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I also think that’s best. That’s the way it works on trustroots, you are just presented a map and can move the marker around.
At least that’s how it works for me on mobile right now. I actually am never asked to type out my address. But from memory I think they changed their approach several times. Maybe Aleja is referring to a prior setup they had?
Or it’s possibly the initial setup, when you mark your location the first time? But i think it’s enough to just give a town there. We could also just ask for the closest town and then present a map.
As some of you know, the reason why Mikael - a hitchhiker from Finland - built Trustroots was because HospitalityClub.org - at its time built by another hitchhiker from Germany, Veit, - was becoming obsolete, and we, hitchhikers, felt like we didn’t have anything specifically built for us to help us meet other people that understand our needs (other hitchhikers simply put, as our needs are different than those of someone who travels by public transport or by its own vehicle). With this in mind, Trustroots was originally built only for hitchhikers, and only afterwards expanded its horizons to everyone else. Because it was designed for us hitchhikers, the purpose of the community was/is not to help people connect with each-other but to help people get in touch with each-other (if You, reader, don’t understand what is the difference between these two that I intend feel free to ask below and will be glad to explain more in detail what I mean with this) in order to help each-other as a result of the fact that we were all hitchhikers there and so clearly understood each-other’s needs. From this perspective it was obvious that the most effective way for our style of traveling based on a map in our pocket, was to instantly allow other hitchhikers see where on the map is not only the closest person that can get us out from the s#it we put ourselves in sometimes (like the freezing cold of a winter night) but also to see if the location of that person is convenient enough for us in relation to our route - if You, reader, never hitchhiked and this is too technical to understand please ask and I will put it in other, hopefully simpler, words.
So, while a map is the most effective solution for us hitchhikers to use in order to decide which person to contact if we need/want help, is not said that also here on Couchers.org a map is equally effective.
And, if the teamleader of this project haven’t thought about it yet, then should think about it now and make a decision.
If Couchers.org is meant to be a better CS, then the purpose of Couchers.org is not to help people get in touch with each-other but to help people connect with each-other (the opposite of Trustroots, though the line between these two concepts is very thin and I am aware that some people here may not see it).
So, if Couchers.org is meant to be a better CS, then the teamleader of the development team of this project must decide which is the most effective tool to allow members to connect with each-other. On CS, this tool until at least May 2020 was a keyword based search using different filters. Was this tool anything super-fancy? No, it was nothing special. Was this tool effective in doing its job? Was extremely effective. Outstanding.
The morale of this story is: whatever tool the teamleader of the development team chooses to build, it must first of all be effective.
Thanks for reading! 
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