Noo making groups doesn’t really help. Only if there are two guys and one girl are guys looking for dates put off. I have met guys on hang outs with another girl and both times he came onto either me or the other girl, and it was still clear that their goal was to meet foreign women. Also, if I ever start a chat with another girl we are always inundated with requests from men to join the chat. Not so much if there is already a guy in the chat. So clearly this isn’t Necessarily a turn off.
Alsoo it would make hangouts a pain to use as it is much harder to coordinate 3 people than 2. Plus there is often no more than one other girl available so if I only wanted to meet with the same sex then we wouldn’t be able to meet up. Smaller places there are often only 1 or 2 people in hangouts altogether. Most of my best experiences with hangouts have been just one on one, why should we ruin this because of others’ bad behaviour.
It just needs to be made clear somehow that it’s not allowed to use hangouts to find dates. As it is, nothing says you can’t do whatever you like once you’ve met someone, and no consequences are implied. And so people don’t feel comfortable reporting it, or even to get angry at the person, as it is technically allowed.
Hey Kelly, yes this could be good sometimes to prevent from receiving a tonne of private messages, but like Aleja has said, believe it or not we also enjoy the company of men and would like to to be able to do this without extra expectations . So this shouldn’t replace addressing of the actual problem
In the old CS there was a 40 character limit for describing the hangout. I mean wtf?! Instead of requiring people to define a hangout in a single sentence shorter than a tweet, (eg: “I want to… hang out and grab coffee”) I think we should do this:
Have a short title with a longer character length (maybe 120 characters or something instead of 40?)
In addition to the main title of the hangout, let people provide a longer description of what exactly they have in mind
Alternatively (or in addition), give the option to let people use tags to indicate what kind of hangup it is so they can select the tags that fit. A few examples:
#group, #coffee, #tea, #hangout, #walking, #ice cream, #central park
This should at least make it easier for people to know what the hangout is all about.
I don’t think hangouts are defined as much by size as the spontaneity and flexibility of them. They are a last-minute, spontaneous meet-up. Some are planned, but most are not. In the past I’ve been in hangouts with 12 people who really didn’t have a plan at all; we just met up and made things up as we went along while we were exploring Toronto.
I wonder if this could be partially fixed by enforcing people to write a short intro that’s no shorter than a certain character count to deter those kind of low quality messages, rather than the current system where you press “say hello” (can’t remember the exact wording on the button?) to indicate you’re interested to hang out with someone.
The majority of women I met through this have said they get overwhelmed by lots of requests from men and having to deal with such level of spam seem like a turn off in using the feature alone.
This is definitely the next thing to fix for me! More often than not, new messages wouldn’t come through as a new notification and the chat didn’t seem to refresh even when new messages are available.
I like this. And I imagine someone on a city page looking for a cafe in a city, with a small box next to the map (or list of places) saying that XYZ is currently looking for a coffee company and you can join The box could just look for hangouts with #coffee tag and show people’s hangouts with that tags, encouraging people to use the feature, even if they didn’t plan to while entering the page.
Heard this from a lot of female CS’ers as well. Maybe we should built in a review system so after the hangout you can review (without reference) your hangout and mark it as dating purpose and that person will get a warning or suspended after two/three times marked? And his/her community score will drop as well.
I like this idea! I think it would be great to somehow integrate the review system into the hangouts functionality. It could get a little messy for big hangouts (eg: with 15+ , maybe you only interacted with a few of them) but if it is optional but easy to review this should improve the quality of hangouts.
So far I designed it that way that references for hangouts and hosting/surfing are exactly the same, not to confuse people with already pretty complicated rating system. The only difference from other reviews is that before reviewing you mark who finally showed up at the meeting. I think the core of the problem is rather feeling safe/comfortable than specifically dating. Guys who just want to get laid or pick up girls on hangouts will have the exactly the same risks of ruining their score like with hosting/surfing.
Yeah, this is important. The review system should be the same, but there should be a mechanism that makes it easier and also encourages people to leave references after attending a hangout or event – as long as it makes sense to do so (obviously people shouldn’t leave a review if they only met the person in passing and didn’t even talk!)
Great work! Just wondering if it’s obligatory to leave a reference for a hangout? Don’t like to leave references for people which I just met 30 mins for example
People won’t be required to leave a reference in hangouts. We wouldn’t want people to leave a reference for someone they met in passing and barely know at all.
Hey Mario! Welcome to the forum! I saw you posted this in a different topic, so I moved it here as it pertains to hangouts (and potentially events).
After the Couchers platform is built, you should be able to create a hangout indicating that you want to do a walk around Naples. Alternatively, if you’re planning to walk to naples from somewhere else – you could create an event.
I personally always thought of hangouts as a last-minute thing that is flexible, whereas an event it usually not last-minute and mostly planned-out in advance.
Just a thought : Hangouts could be made in such a way that people ask (or propose) to join the hangout and the hangout “owner” decides who can join or not their hangout, and once the details of the actual hangout are filled in (time and location) they would be visible only to the people who have been granted access by the hangout owner. It would be compatible with the idea shared earlier to have a 2-step process with a “confirmated” hangout once time and location (+any other mandatory details) have been filled in.
Just joined, think this a great idea. I have read through the posts above and want to expound on Jonas’s post above.
I have been using CS for about 10 years but only really use it for the Hangout function which is great as a primarily solo traveller to meet up with other travellers in the area and explore. I’ve also used it in my hometown when I am missing the travelling feeling to just surround myself with travellers.
The biggest issue I have with hangouts (apart from the horrible notifications and delayed messaging on the app) is the ability as the hangout creator to control the hangout once you start accepting requests which creates a number of issues people have expressed above
I will unashamedly say that I often want to be selective of who and how many people join my hangout as I might be looking for a certain vibe, or not want to have to interact with more than 3 or 4 people.
I won’t go through every issue as some have been touched on in above posts but I believe the below would help solve them and create a better experiance for all.
Hangout creator is the only person who can accept requests to join
Hangout creator can appoint other admins to the hangout (good for when you are travelling with a friend and you are both trying to organise the hangout together)
Allow the hangout creator to invite people in the area to the hangout (CS only lets people request to join)
Allow to set for a maximum participants to join a Hangout so people who join have an understanding of the group size the creator is going for
Allow to set the hangout to “Open” where anyone can join without request or invite.
Allow for clearer indication of the location and time to meet set only by the Hangout creator (map with link to google maps would be good)
Welcome Ben! Thanks so much for the helpful feedback on hangouts! I like the points you made and agree that the hangouts should be much more customizable and feature-rich than they are currently on CS. I especially like the idea of allowing the creator to set it to “open” so anyone can join without approval. I know I’ve been on hangouts before where we were having so much fun we didn’t even notice someone else had requested to join!
Sorry to hear that. Thank u tho for leaving those 20% for the rest of males. Most of the time I’ve had really good experience walking around, hiking, going for a day trip on a bike etc with females locals or travelers (regardless of age).
Of course there is no perfect recipe for each situation , as for me it’s often a wise choices matter and certain precautions, I do pay attention for profile “reputation” and picture (cuz I would never go for a hike with a “sunset” instead of face on profile).
Unfortunately, despite community efforts to create safe and trustworthy space for everyone, certain negative situations might happen time to time, cuz at the end of the day we never know what is going on in everyone’s head.
Hangouts was activated in 2016 during my travel in Amsterdam I think, I thought it was a great idea, nevertheless thinking in the filosophy of couchsurfing, i see this tool was designed the perfect way to be used for people that doesn’t surf neither host… So CS grow up with many not hosts neither surfers. Hangouts is not nice in this way at all.
Hangouts should be a tool to join a host and a surfer that in that moment of the time could be hosting or surfering, or not, but had already the experience, so they have reviews (reviews that should be created just through host, surf, hangout or creator of events (events also should be created just by hosts and surfers). So a host or surfer that enter to hangouts looking to met visitor in the city, or other host, out of an official event, should be the focus of hangouts.
So; It would be nice to make stronger the community, in the way to encourage to be a host and surfer the world with our community… the limits I propose here in hangouts could help to get e cleaner tool tied to the end of the community that is to be host or surfer.
So the algoritm to try to use hangouts could be active just for surfers and hosts that use the app for this end at least X number of time per year (host or surf).
How to include the people that is not able to be a host in his city and what to create events, or hangout with other hosts and surfers?: Encourage to travel at least to the next city and surf!! (200 km out of your city to don’t hook the algorithm with neighbor friends #traveltheworld
. So this shouldn’t replace addressing of the actual problem 
Just wondering if it’s obligatory to leave a reference for a hangout? Don’t like to leave references for people which I just met 30 mins for example 
