In some cases that just speaks for the people being too lazy to write one.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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a. problem of old references can be really a problem, since it could reflect a situation that has changed completely, think someone that moved to another place, has married/reproduced/divorced, changed its job. Then one student that ten years ago had a dirty tiny room in a quiet place near center, had a lot of time to stay with you, now could be married, with two noisy sons, the apartment now is large and clean but far from the city and its job let you see him just at breakfast ?
Should in this case allowed to remove the requests ? but how to remove, just on date or selectively (for example that person could say to remove references just about when it was in the former apartment, keeping the one on the person ?
b. The idea of separating the reference part in Host/Space/Ambience/Logistic is on one side good, since among the others could allow to split part of the reference in case of cases as before, and look for the part one is more interested. Also it would be more valuable when comparing people that use the community both for hosting and visiting.
One can have got an overall negative references because was living in an inconvenient place, housemates were very rude, but the host was friendly and the sleeping place was clean. When traveling why should it be penalized for this ? or the other way, praised for location but terrible as a person?
The inconvenience is however that more in detail referenze tend to be impersonal.
In this case i would suggest that the score would not be good/neutral/bad or 0 to 10, but rather than the person that leave the comment can leave “better than my average/average/less than my average” That is: was in one field a better host than the other ones you had, as the others, of worse than the others ? This way would not be a “good” or “bad” but better or worse than the average of a person, that can be at any level. So a less than average can result either from a bad experience, 2 or 3 on a 0-10 scale, or from a good experience (7-8) when the previous one were all wonderful. so you can easily compare (an useful thing: a way to be ale to read all reference one person has left to other people, they say a lot).
people that are at first three experiences can leave only the testual reference, without any other indication. After the 4th thei can begin to add better/worse. After their 5th reference they will get a messge asking them, mased on next experience, how would score the first three. This to avoid the case of people that after an experience that even the host judged barely acceptable left a great reference telling that they had “even a bed” [reading the reference on the previous host, they said they slept on a carpet on the dining room, but if was positive since it was the first time they found someone tho host them], or that left a negative reference on their second experience, all good but the shower was clogged with hairs. After two weeks appeared references for thir 3rd and 4th host: all positive but the 3rd was terrible, I would consider it as a negative one, the fourth was on par with the second. Happened that after the first experience (say 10/10), looking extremely good their standard had risen too much so a 7/10 looked negative, then after a 5/10 and another 7/10 they decided that all were acceptable, you cannot always find the top, and gave the green also the the 3rd and 4th, but could not change the second.
This is the reason to wait that soeone has a minimun of experiences before allowing to score it.
c. there are some cases (I have had these cases both as an host and as a guest) where for some valid reason the person do not want to receive a reference before a certain date. Sometime up to 30 days later.
d. there are cases when for some reason the good/bad cannot be decided immediately or the reference cannot be left immediately for other reasons (think about the person that asked to stay two days on one leg of its trip and one other day on its way back, three weeks later; or when you are uncertain and need to know something by another guest that can be long to reply
e. A case that once I withnessed with one guest: she told immediately that she was going for two weeks to a workaway in a community farm on the mountains, and there were no possibility to have internet, nor she was willing to do 15 km to find a signal just to write a reference within the 14 day span.
Hey I read your suggestions but I disagree on too many different choices to grade like “Host/Space/Ambience/Logistic”
What came immediately to my mind is that “cleanliness” of a place his highly (and I can’t stress this enough) subjective. What is pretty tidy and high-effort for one person can mean the untidiest place for somebody else. The result for me as a host would be that I consciously and subconsciously would accept only requests of people who I assume have lower standards of cleanliness than super-demanding persons. This doesn’t apply just to cleanliness alone but also to other aspects. I really like good reviews/references therefore I have a filter of people who I assume will grade me high and in the long run this will also lead to Couch Surfers rating their hosts a bit better than they really feel like because they don’t want to let them down “hey this person was so nice, but his place was like a 3/10 for me, but since he/she was so nice I give them a 6/10 or 7/10”.
When it comes to rating by a value the current system on Couchers.org is pretty fine. You can grade a person by a slider between something like 0/10 and 10/10 and you have this additonal option to give them a super review like 11/10 but the phrasing suggests that you would only use that if your expectations have been exceeded what would really not be the case in a lot of the encounters and probably will be pretty rare and nobody should feel let down if they “only” get the 10/10. It is a bit similar to the old Vouching feature on CS.
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Well, when I revived the topic, I actually meant to say - it’s strange to talk about mandatory references before leaving a reference stops being a quest. Probably I have chosen the wrong place to post about issues of the current reference system 
Also, I guess people who were not leaving references were the ones we call freeloaders, and Couchers is anyway thinking of ways to deal with them. Would make sense to wait and see how it works out, and wait for the reference-leaving system to work well too. Maybe it will already eliminate the problem (I personally didn’t have it even on CS)