I completely agree with you that we should get references right! I just think we don’t have to get into a long discussion about it before the platform is actually up and running 
I think this is low priority because we can always change back and forth between mandatory reviewing and not even after we go public…I personally think that we should leave that up to the user, if a user doesn’t want to write a review they shouldn’t have to.
For me this is part of a broader topic, the clash is for me between safety and user friendly and I think both are very important but safety shouldn’t hurt user friendly, if I don’t want to be safe I shouldn’t be forced to, do you understand what I mean? Maybe we can have a badge or something saying “this user left 10/15 reviews” so we “punish” people who don’t leave reviews? I still think this is an import discussion don’t get me wrong, just a low priority important discussion because I don’t mind for the beginning to have the reviews mandatory… In the long run I think this is a bad idea that will get user friendliness… There are many other ways to ensure safety and I think mandatory ALWAYS results in bad behaviour… I would just copy paste something if I was forced to write a review before sending another request and I didn’t have time for it (that’s another topic - maybe we can score reviews somehow?)
There’s lots of examples going around the forum of self-regulating scores. We need to beware of scoring and meta-scoring each and everything. If in the end nobody understands how the numbers are made they’re substantially less useful anyway.
I’m a bit wary of this, maybe irrationally so. If it were CS developing this feature I’d expect many fuckups in the score because of deleted profiles or mistimed deadlines. Of course that’s just my pessimism.
Fair enough, but you could say this about every discussion here. And we need to start with something! From what I’ve heard the coding volunteers have been at work for quite some time already? So when starting to implement a feature it’s really necessary for them to be able to look up the corresponding thread for input, be it a new idea or just a general survey of views.
I stand by my above idea of blocking or limiting the ability to make a request if a reference hasn’t been written for a period of time, e.g. seven days. I absolutely don’t see how this affects user-friendliness too much, since at that point you can still just write a reference and go ahead. I feel seven days would be a good watershed to allow some flexibility, to allow some reflection on what to write if needs be and to get over trip difficulties that might stop you from writing for a moment. Anything beyond a week probably is just procrastination, which is the exact thing we’d like to stop.
Make sure in the beginning that we recognise problems; users being blocked unfairly because of implementation or systematic issues. Maybe start with a messaging limit instead of a full blockage till it runs smoothly.
I completely agree! We could make a nice blog explaining everything we did and publish it what do you think?
About the limitations and blocking I’m completely against that if someone doesn’t want to write a review they shouldn’t have to IMHO if you wanna talk about that sometime we could have a chat I think it’s an interesting topic! Tiny.cc/chagai I think it’s a big topic in general and maybe we could open a new topic for it? But I would love to just discuss this on a call with you as well I think that was I can explain myself and understand you best 
whereby.com/chagai I get a notification when you click on the link and we can talk 
I was replying to something else and I thought of this. Not sure if it’s a good idea or a terrible one, but I thought I’d share.
I would like to be able to see how often a guest or a host did not get a reference.
Then that speaks a bit for itself.
In some cases that just speaks for the people being too lazy to write one.
In Cs i had almost same amount privat, host and surf references. But some of my privat are in reality host references (me as host) bc people wrote the reference later.
But also bc i took requests from messages also, so than my fault.
But you dont want this categorys or?
You want guestbook?
I was thinking about it. As i like artjournaling it would really motivate me if the guestbook can be nice looking.
Like https://wall-of-fame.com/ when edding made an draw contest (its not about the drawings, its about it being possible- but i have NO knowledge in IT) Is this possible?
And i want to create different guestbooks, like example “Australia Trip” , or when “living/hosting in Country X”, “Country Z”, “Hosting friends” guestbook,… i want to organice them and everyone could or not create different ones.
Also this would be even cute memory to print after using couchers for a longer trip. I loved when surfers wrote me personal giftcards even more than i cared about references.
Make it mandatory just by using an easy multiple choice scale: good, neutral, bad
Might be good but how would people traveling around for a few months arrange their plans for the next few days than?
Give them like lets say a week to give a reference/review as they might be on the road and don’t have access to good internet at the moment.
Also like a scoreboard might be interesting for future reference board.
Hosting space x/10
Host x/10
Interaction X/10
Communication to arrange host/space x/10
…
Will give a better overview of how it was. Maybe thost did have a off day and wasn’t feeling 100% but the space and all the rest was top. Just so you don’t punish a slightly less point of the experience and give a better insight into how it was.
Good point! So my current line of thought is that we could impose a penalty to a user’s community score if they don’t fill in a review within 2 weeks of the interaction. When missed often enough, they’ll naturally get less interaction requests (e.g. hosting/surfing etc.) and we get a more trustworthy platform in general.
What do you think?
As 6 months has gone by since the topic of mandatory (or not) references was discussed, I’m wondering if there was a result or decision made on what couchers.org will be doing in this regard.
I think references are good up to a certain number of them. On CS I wrote references if someone asked me to or we talked about it, but since I had a lot of them, I just didn´t care if people gave me references or not after staying with me. After a dozen references or so they just say the same thing and it just accumulates a lot of words. Most people that stayed with me or I stayed with were nice people, sure. Some were really nice. But really I didn´t have anything to add that wasn´t said before in their reference list.
The way people write references are cultural, and a positive reference from me would to others look like an indirect warning. That´s another topic, really, isn´t it?
One thing I like about a Dutch Ebay-like website is that they ask you if the experience had been positive or negative, and then have you click one or more aspects that were especially good/bad (“has been friendly” or “responds on time”).
Maybe something like that could make reviews less black and white, but still so easy that most people will do them.
I want to add to this old topic. There are discussions on encouraging people to leave (good) references, but I feel right now the really helpful thing would be to make leaving references more convenient.
First, I think having to wait for two days is super counterintuitive. I already mentioned it at the socials,
I thought there’s no option to leave a host/surfer reference yet and ended up leaving a friend one. Even if I knew, I wouldn’t be happy about it, as I like to write while memories are still fresh. I feel it’s more logical if the option it there the day the surfer leaves (probably in the afternoon/evening).
I was told the two days gap is there for safety purposes (as in, if you can write a reference while still at the host’s place, what if smb pressures you to write a good one). Maybe a better way to go about that would be to have a possibility to change your reference? Probably through the safety team. It can also be useful in other situations - say, if you find out smth is missing after you left the reference. It also will work if the surfer arrived late or overstayed, and the gap won’t.
Secondly, there is no reminder to leave the reference on the app. Yes, I received an email, but nothing on the website itself. Is it on the list? We are discussing character limits and guiding questions, but just to find the “leave a reference” button I need to go a long way. On Couchsurfing “did you like hosting …” would be the first thing you’d see when you log in.
Third, I received an email a week after the surfer left. Probably the first notification should appear at the same time the possibility to write the reference opens? Maybe not on the email but on the app.
There is no point in adding more references to a profile that already has 100+ refs.
But mandatory references for profiles that have <10 refs, that is very beneficial for the platform as a whole.
I disagree.
- Those 100+ references might be old. Perhaps the person changed or they do hospex different way. I don’t care how the person did hospex 7 years ago, I do care how they do it now. I am always most interested to read the newest experiences possible as they describe the person in the most accurate way.
- I wouldn’t trust a person if they told me: “I stayed with/hosted 20 people this year” but there would be no record of that? Why? Did people not write a reference for a reason? Is anything wrong with this person that people can’t even write a one sentence reference?
- Lastly, I consider not writing references rude. This is just my personal thing but I don’t accept guests if I see they don’t write references to their hosts. Sometimes the reference is the only thing that people get in exchange for hosting and not getting even that because somebody might think that I already have enough so don’t need a new one? Nah.
I agree with you:
When I am hosting I care more about if the host has recent request than how many they might have gathered in the long run.
@topic:
I support mandatory references.