Hey you lovely Couchers developers,
it’s kind of gone quiet over here on the forum, so I was wondering, is there a list of things that you’re working on? A roadmap of some kind?
If you tell me where to go and look, I’ll paste it up here for everyone to take a look.
Personally, I’d like to see a nice list of the top 20 top things you’re all working on right now. 
Maybe a good cleaning ?
I have been addressed to this site:
and the results that it giver for couchers are not perfectly good.
Why there are unannounced facebook links ?
I don’t know what your reply means @csmbs. Are you one of the devs for Couchers? I think it would be really great if we hear from them about what’s going on.
no, I am not one of couchers developers. My question was tareted to them, from whom we want an answer. (It soooks it is in one of the scripts loaded)
Any devs out there who would like to let forum users know either what’s happening in terms of a roadmap? Or you can point us in the right direction for where to look, if you already have one. I think right now, it would be more useful than the disembodied newsletter that doesn’t really say anything meaningful about the project.
Awaiting for some kind of roadmap for more than a year now. Right now it feels that the mobile apps will take forever to appear, and in this mobile world without those there can’t be no real future for Couchers. I would settle for a timeframe, how long is it gonna take, year, two years, more?
I agree @azat11. You know, I think I would settle for any kind of response from the devs at this stage. It’s strange how Couchers has gone so quiet. When I joined a year or two ago it felt very alive.
I still feel very energised for it, but have nowhere to put my energy. I’d love to be able to help, but without a roadmap/timeframe of any kind, I don’t even know what needs helping with, or how I can help. I can even help put a roadmap together for forum users if I’m told where to look for it.
@gjw, I hear you! Many volunteers have been waiting for an update like this. What’s happened is that there was a movement to update/redesign the backend side of the website, but that fizzled out. So now there’s a counter movement to redirect focus to the existing structure and the mobile app. I can’t say when we’ll get news about where the devs are at currently, but I would encourage you to join the next town hall meeting once it’s scheduled!
From my vantage point on the community team, properly functioning notifications should be fairly high up on the list of priorities. I will poke the devs and leadership for an official update or response here soon. Hopefully it’s not far out.
Since the project is completely run by volunteers, I think these kinds of dips in activity are normal. The nature of the project is such that it can ramp up rapidly anytime, so I’m hopeful 
Thanks for your reply @Emily, I kind of gathered from the newsletter that there was a redesign underway, so it’s interesting to have that confirmed.
I absolutely understand about the project having peaks and troughs as it’s run by volunteers. I think I’m interested in how we might bridge the gap between what the devs are up to and what the rest of us, who may have good skills to offer can bring to the project in the mean time, if only to keep the energy up.
However there a a few things, that does not require much time, and can make couchers more friendly.
For example i got this messge in my email:
Hi *!
You missed a notification on Couchers.org.
written with a tone as if was my fault, when what couchers say is completely false.
I did not missed any notification: mostly bacause i did not got any notification (the notification is actually the one that i was reading, and of coursae i did not miss it). If where an accuse that I missed one messge, it is unjustifiable to send a remind less than one second after the message has been made available.
If a machine complains with an human after one second, what should i do with people that wait days to reply ?
Of course this made me unhappy with the people asking through couchers since the beginning, not for their fault.
Perhaps you can rewrite the email you received @csmbs, and copy/paste the new version in this thread?
simple:
instead of “You missed a notification on couchers…”
use “You got a message on couchers…”
and on friend request where you receive a real notifiucation do not send after 55 seconds a message telling that you had missed the previous one
For my part, I host regular meetups in Berlin, try to accept everyone looking for a host, created a Signal chat group for our community, and try to keep up with the forums. I’ve found it hard to attend online meetings now that the pandemic is subsiding and I’m not as active in the volunteer group anymore because there are more opportunities to do “on the ground” community building.
for anyone who’s not a dev, I’d say the single most important way you can contribute is by hosting travelers and setting your hosting status to “can host” or “can maybe host”. What will ultimately make couchers work is having active hosts.
If you can’t host in your home, starting a regular event is the next best thing. And if you don’t have a community yet, you can apply to have it created.
all that aside, another form of helping the platform grow is attending couchsurfing events/hosting on couchsurfing simply as a way to talk to people in person about what we’re trying to do. I think there is still a lot of value in that.
There’s less and less work to be done for the community online as in-person opportunities grow, so I’d say that offline is the best place to start. 
I would also host meetups if I lived in a city, but I’m in the middle of nowhere, so was wondering what else I could do.
I’d love it if we could find a way to improve onboarding, because the vast majority of signups don’t have any form of profile, let alone having stated if they can host or not.
There is a place where online meeting can be important: to meet people willing to help with organizing a visit to your area, or places you know well (for example because you lived there until a few months before …).
So could be an option to register in a list of “online helpers” for different places. (where one can register as “local helper” in more than one place)
I think this could easily be part of or the entire job of our current community builders (people who have applied to moderate/populate pages in their community section of the site, found under “local info”). I understand there’s currently a backlog of applications that’s being worked through 