I really wanna see a new and improved website that, as the landing page says, does what Couchsurfing both did and didn’t do!
I loved couchsurfing, joined in 2011 and saw it “peak” I guess in terms of usership vs quality… and then tank rapidly. I miss the old pages so much and the random forums. I met some great people up until around 2015, then it changed dramatically. I was travelling in 2017 and god the hangouts! They were awful! A decent concept, sure, but they were so unreliable and the people were so flaky. The trust had totally gone.
Still, I can see couchers seems to have their ideas set out straight! And, as a couple other people have mentioned, BeWelcome is flawed and TrustRoots doesn’t seem to have hit the ground running. I think especially in terms of references etc there is a lot that could be done better. And, of course, the not-for-profit! I miss having a community to just browse every now and then, read some interesting stories about travelling etc. Now it’s all just promotional nonsense.
Anyway, I want a new community and some hope!