Hi folks,
I just saw this event in the Paris community and while I personally don’t have a problem with it, I wanted to double-check if you think that’s in line with our concept of couch surfing.
Any ideas?
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This eventually could become problematic if it clogs up the event system and keeps people from finding actual events.
We do want to create a “public trips” feature that is similar to the one on CS, but that is something coming a little later.
What should we do in the meantime?
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Re-name it’s title to “Public Trip”? 
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I do admire the creativity of the user who posted it, but I agree that these kinds of “event” could become problematic (I’ve seen it on Couchsurfing in the past; particulary in touristy cities). If it becomes normal for one person to do it, I dare say other users might do the same.
Could a sustainable solution be the education of users on what is considered an event?
Perhaps there could be a prompt for them to decide if it really meets a particular definition of an event, and if not, guide them towards searching for a host, or posting a discussion.
For instance, the fact that an entire city (rather than a venue or specific co-ordinates) has been chosen as the location might be criteria that could be used to ask the user to confirm it really is an event.
Likewise, multi-day events are also unusual (usually only things like invasions).
And then in this specific case, perhaps a polite message to the user, explaining why it’s not what events are intended for, but guiding them to send individual requests, or perhaps to post a discussion on the Paris page, might be the way to go. The message might include a copy of the event text, so there’s little harm from an immediate deletion of the event.
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As we want to have public trips later on, I think it would be good not to remove or educate users against posting them now.
But a discussion post would indeed seem a better fit and less tweaked than an event.
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As far as educating… I know if I was in the position of the person posting and someone simply responded with a link to this forum thread, I would likely get the hint. Maybe for the time being if people see this happening again, give that a try?
Yeah, i remember seeing stuff like this on C$ and also the occasional person offering to rent out a room or half a room (hello, don’t you know about AirB?) I guess they were trying to avoid the taxes.
Agree that people should send out personal requests to hosts. This way just seems lazy. The whole point of hospex is the people we meet, the connections that may become lifelong friends… or just happy old memories.
Pero problema solved when there’s the public trips section.
The two cases shown are a bit different: the first one is just an “open request” that is “traditionally” one feature of public trips.
But the difference between public trips and event is on meaning: An event has a place, a public trip too, a beginning and end date, the same.
What for an event is a participation for a trip is an invitation.
The description is different, but it is the same text mode.
Think about something that is normally accepted as event, even if it is still another kind of interaction: the “travelmate search to go on a certain period to a certain place”. If you change travelmate with host you get an open request/trip ; if you set exactly the itinerary could be a planned collective excursion.
So I would use the same code for events/travelmates search/open requests just wit an additional tag to select which one.
The second if a bit off topic, look for a wwoof offer …should not be here.
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