On Couchers there is not an entry for it (yet). And on CS it wasn’t always like this either.
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I agree with @michaela
I write the kind of references that would help me if I was looking for a host or considering hosting a surfer. I mostly want to know if they are respectful, but also, how were they to engage with? Did they want/expect a lot of time, or prefer to be independent (either as host or surfer)? Anything that isn’t listed in their profile that someone would want to know before saying yes?
There is an amount of subjectivity in what makes a “great” host or surfer, which will always depend on the person. So I try to give information that will help someone decide for themselves if this person is a good match, regardless of how I felt about it.
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I try to mix the idea of having informational Value for the surfers/hosts after me as well as some nice memories - might sound stupid but i enjoyed reading trough my references from time to time because some where just really nice 
But it also spirals down to the Problem, that a lot of references were too nice and i also encountered the problem that a lot of my references called me a (pretty,funny,intelligent etc.) “little girl” at some point, making it sound like i was a playboy bunny.
What im trying to say: I think it makes perfect sense to write a guide! maybe even include certain phrases that should be left out (or maybe just i had the problem ) ?
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How do you feel about people mentioning in their reference that you gave them keys?
It always made me a little uncomfortable because I didn’t want that fact being visible to everyone. I also never put it in my profile to begin with because I wanted to decide if guests get keys after I had met them. In the end, I think everyone I hosted always got them, but still. Probably something I have to remember to mention to guests in the future.
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If this happens to you often and you don’t feel good about it, I would probably tell the guests not to mention it in the reference (for safety reasons or for not making other people feel weird if you choose not to give them keys).
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It is one of the things that should not be mentioned in the reference, since it may create expectations for other guests, such when a guest wrote a good reference telling that I had accompanied them to a visit, and pick them at bus stop, later another one wrote a negative telling that i had refused to pick them at bus stop.
Offer if valid only on certain days/times and is spontaneous. You cannot expect at any time (expecially when there are two groups)
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How about having a link “what you can write about” or smth like that on the page where you write the reference?
It can lead to all these suggestions:
and maybe some examples of good references.
That would be great! And the place too 
I prefer references be individual, so you write a reference for John and one for Dan.>
Figure what happen if at a certain time they visit separately and the host does not know if the reference was influenced by fact that were two or not.
How do you write references now if you host several people together? I write “I hosted John and Dan and they were great guys…”, so at least that would go to both the profiles, not just to one guy who sent the request.
upd. anyway this is actually off topic, there’s another one on linking profiles
If the request come from one person for two guests i leave ony to the person that did the request; if both sent thir request each one gaet one, personal, possibly identycal.
I know from experience that there is people that is not happy to “share” a reference.
Beside this, if someone has a “shared” profile as a couple or a family does not get any reference.
What happen if they eventually part ? what happen to shared references ? (I had a few of such cases …)
I understand now the idea is to link profiles, so linked people can send one request for all of them and receive the same reference for all the profiles (not sure if I understand it correctly though). In that case, if they unlink the profiles, everyone still has all the references
correct.
Linking travelers profile would also allow to send all messages to each one automatically.
References should not however be forced to be for the whole group, but it could be just an option, otherwise the person has all profiles redy to get the reference.
Same for hosting reference, when one is hosted by a group.
Yeah, could be nice to have an option to add smth personal to each reference! Or even to write different ones if you want. Probably more difficult to implement though?
I was thinking differently: each reference must be always written to a single person, so you can completely personalize, the only option would be a button that just copy the previous reference in the edit area, just to help those whose devices make C&P inconvenient.
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Hi, I see this is an old post, but I wanted to know more about how Couchers will handle negative feedback. I found this difficult on CS (and indeed, many other websites which involve trust). Typically, negative feedback triggers the other person to leave their own negative (and possibly abusive feedback), complain so the post is taken down, or simply close and reopen another profile. So it becomes daunting to leave negative feedback and easier just to say nothing at all, which doesn’t help others. When I signed up to Couchers, it was noted that this would be a key thing to address vs the old CS platform, so I am interested if anyone found a solution.
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Hi @alsion welcome to the forum 
Yeah we had quite some discussions and also different views about how to approach and support this best. The top results when searching for “negative” give a good overview of the conversation so far.
That being said, maybe @jesse could jump in with the state of our current implementation?
I just want to point out that unlike Couchsurfing.com, Couchers.org has an anonymous portion of leaving a reference that the person will not see. It goes straight to support instead. You can also rank you experience with the person, another thing that will be taken into consideration anonymously (the person will not see how you ranked them). So, there are three ways to give feedback. You can choose not to leave a negative reference, per se, but raise concerns with support and/or affect the person’s overall “community standing” instead.
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Thanks for the explanation. These ideas sound great.
P.s. I realise a weird thing: when I access the forum from my laptop, it shows me only really old posts, with no activity for months or even 1 year. That’s why I commented here. But when I log in from my phone like now, I see there heaps going on in the forum! So I will be sure to dig into the forum more and search it as well. Thanks for the tip.
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Is it possible you’re not logged in from your laptop?