Verification process

Community Culture
21

Agreed, would rather not have this become a swipe right/left situation (sus/not as sus)… for verification.

1 Like
22

There is also an other way to verify if a person is “real”.
You can ask people if they want to be verified (it´s not mandatory and should never be).
If they want to be verified they should pay for the port cost of a letter you send them, in this letter there should be a code they have to put into a verification.
That way you got:

  1. At least they are willing to contribute, else they won´t pay the port cost and also the name can be verified that way.
  2. The address is real, else they can´t receive any mail.

This way, no true personal data is needed and also do they get a nice memory from Couchers.org before they even started using it.
The price should be only the port cost and maybe the cost for the letter itself, because people with little income might not be able to pay any larger fees.

2 Likes
23

Yes! This was one of the ways CS used to verify (and maybe still are) I had a nice collection of postcards :slight_smile:

1 Like
24

Wading in here because I think this is a really key process to think about for the success of the org.
Coming from the ‘old school’ org of Servas (www.servas.org) where they have an IN PERSON interview process. Now that, in this day and age is a bit much, but they, in over 70 years (!) didn’t really have any sort of negative news about bad actors.

Figuring out how to “verify” people - which really means verifying the GOALS and MORALS of the new member, and make sure they understand the standards of the org.

I would humbly suggest a 2 prong approach:

  1. strongly worded standards that people need to agree to - repeatedly. Set a program that pops up a quick refresher that people need to click to agree to every other sign in. The ones already in place are a good start, but could be written with more clarity and force.
  2. ‘letters’ of recommendation/reference. I would suggest that a potential member needs to get 3 letters of recommendation that are somehow checked before they can become a member. yes, I realize that this kind of a big deal, but having hurdles to membership is exactly what will help create a good, safe community.

would love to hear other’s thoughts

25

before becoming a dot com, couchsurfing was volunteers ran and used a vouching system. the dot com demoted/ trivialized that, but these are still on older profiles. the initial vouchers were known, trusted organizer types. after a member receives a certain number of vouches, they can then vouch for others.

verifying id cards do not speak to how safe someone is. l’ve gotten molested by men who held government & transnational corporate jobs. this ID requirement also actively excludes people without papers or who are stateless. if this community excludes these folks, l for 1 will not support/ take part.

1 Like