I agree. THis is what airbnb.com is using too.
Maybe go one next step further away from…couchsurfing and airbnb too.
Do not allow public references so that people dont feel obliged to leave a positive ref in order to receive one in return!
Allow them to leave extensive internal refs , like booking.com i think, after a stay in a hostel/hotel, you get an extensive bullet points questionaire about EVERYTHING regarding your stay altho the rating for ‘‘how close to public transport’’ kind of questions do not apply with hospex and when it does, it involves freeloaders who want to stay ‘centrally as possible’ which is not the spirit of hospex/exploring.
Then internal only rating could - if the tech allows it- be shown as a badge on each profile like this:
This user has hosted 4 couchers (1 female, 2 males, 1 non-binary)
Was hosted 2 times. (by 1 female, by 1 male)
Positive: 3 couchers said they trust this coucher
Negative:1 coucher said they dont trust this coucher
Neutral: 1 coucher said they dont trust this coucher
Map of where this couchers was hosted in.
Map of what countries/cultures this coucher has hosted.
From the above information we can get a sense of trust (and trust me some ppl will still choose to stay with someone despite negative refs). We know if someone is hosting only one gender (usually a sex predator). We know if he/she picks ppl from one region (again, usually but not always a sex predator). We can infer a lot of things about this info.
Another safety issue is prepare an safetey for couchers pdf ebook and send it default to each new member to download and have it always in some ‘‘resources’’ area called ‘‘travel library’’ or something where you can gather memoirs as ebooks from couchers, create even if you want a small bookshop if they want to sell them than give them for free, and allow ppl to pay and download memoirs of travel they want to read. Finally allow each member to have a blog if tech allows it, cause you can get a lot of personality traits and a lot of info about one’s personaity from his/her blog.
So overal trust would be shown by how much a user is engaging not just hosting (and socializing with ppl) but how much he/she support this concept of meeting and hosting or get hosted by a traveller/stranger.
A profile would be showing:
- How many ppl he/she hosted and when was the last hosting
- if they are hosting now or prefer only to meet up
- if they created any events (im not happy with hangouts, they created a lot of bad vibes for me, events ar emore controlable and one can organize them ahead of time better and with more safety)
- if they upheld any regular events (altho this can also indicate a sex predator, depends though what he/she do during those regular events)
- if they write in this forum (yes, if they engage in online fora in couchers sharing their thoughts and ideas, this is also something a sex predator normally would not bother with, unless to promote himself to possible victims of his… like it happens in couchsurfing.com groups where you see peole with negative refs regarding their stalker behaviour, still having a profile, and still leaving comments to self-advertise their availability to women/men they like to host… need i say more?)
Overal engagement of a user should be shown on his /her profile with a badge and if they reach 1000 comments or posts in a forum get a new badge and so forth.
BUt i would not like to see a feature where you read all the contributions of a user. This is a good helper to stalkers. I think couchsurfering.com and facebook.com and any social network suffers from stalkers and haters (ppl you met already , you perhaps denied sex or whatever or they just hate you for whatever). COuchsurfing.com has allowed clusters and teams of old members to create hate squads to my knowledge. Racist hate squads even. IN a discussion you would see only europeans and australians and almos tnobody from other regions discussing.
I would say a forum where each country has its own subforum where they can talk in their own language if they want, that would be awesome and cool and a true sign of multicultural society in this project.