Does anyone read the community builder form?

Open Talk
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I filled it a week ago and did not receive a reply yet. I am thinking if it is delay because people are busy or is it because no one read it?

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Hi Artium! There is currently a backlog of communities that need to be created. Unfortunately the process is currently a complicated, manual process. We’re working to get through the backlog and will reach out to you soon once your community has been created!

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That is cool, thanks for the reply.

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If you are not doing it already, I advice to prioritize creation of country communities over city communities.

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Yeah, why do we have that much friction for creating new communities? In my understanding supporting local communities is the main strategy for growth right now?

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It is a mystery to me as well. Creating communities should be instant!

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Hi, do you have an update regarding this?

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@Jesse in case you missed it ^^

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Unfortunately not much progress has been made on the backlog, but I do have some good news on this front: We are building a new system to automate and speed up community creation!

Current System for Community Creation
As mentioned above, the current process is very manual and slow. After a user fills out a google form on the Couchers.org dashboard, then the community admin (a volunteer) has to complete the following manual steps:

  1. Review the information provided to ensure the information is complete, valid and not a duplicate of an existing community.
  2. Determine the “parent” community (eg: Germany would be the parent of the Berlin community).
  3. Draw the “polygon” of the community (the boundaries of the community on a map) and record the map coordinates of the polygon.
  4. Manually copy the information from the form and the coordinates of the polygon and write this information to the database.
  5. Verify that the community was properly added by checking it on the live website.

New System for Community Creation
A user fills out a “new community” form which is integrated into the dashboard (not a google form!) When doing this the user selects the parent community and places a circle on the map where the community is. Then the community admin (a volunteer) only has to do the following:

  1. Check to make sure the submission is valid (eg: not spam/gibberish and circle isn’t in the middle of the ocean).
  2. Click “approve” and the community is added to the live website.

The new system is simpler and more automated, which will ensure that new communities can be created quickly and easily.

In the meantime we will continue to manually work through the backlog of communities that still need to be created. Thank you for your patience!

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Hi, thank you for the explanation.

Is there anything that can be done to help?

I’d also like to challenge the need for strict community hierarchy and location. I don’t see the value it has and on the other hand some communities might have no location or parent community, or more than one possible parent. Additionally, boundaries can change and are political in some places in the world. Do you really want to deal with these issues?

All I want is a message board to post stuff regarding my country/city and a place where traveller’s could ask questions and get local tips. A community named “Israel” and a community named “Jerusalem” is enough for this purpose, there is no need for GIS data nor placing them in some sort of hierarchy.

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