You should add local guides to every country

Hello everyone,

Love this topic! I personally think Couchers should try to integrate Wikivoyage on this particular matter. My thoughts on why:

  • Creating a travel based repository from scratch is a massive undertaking, and will take years to become something mature and functional.
  • Wikivoyage already exists - and it would be inefficient to ignore its presence. Their values mirror that of Couchers - the site is community-powered, is supported by the Wikimedia Foundation and hence, has no ads (or other ulterior motives of making money) whatsoever.
  • The website prioritises text and simplicity over heavy multimedia content, graphics and whatnot - because it recognises the data hardships travelers (who rely on this information) face on the road.
  • The ever active community keeps the information up-to-date and relevant, and the website covers a massive portion of the world.
  • I am no coder (far from one), but I think it could be possible to mirror Wikivoyage in some manner, import the information from there and then add Coucher-specific info on it - like who are the closest Coucher hosts, closest meetups in the place, could also come up with a way to rank local-favourites.
  • Additionally, I believe it could be good to set up a two-way street - i.e. have the Coucher community contribute to Wikivoyage, and enrich the already existing information.

I hope the Couchers community likes this idea, and moves forward in this direction. I donā€™t mean to duplicate any existing discussions, but I didnā€™t find anyone specifically suggesting this source - so I did. Someone was discussing Wikitravel - but this is a commercialised offshoot of Wikivoyage, which ended up not being successful.

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Hi Drashya! Welcome and thanks for the great contribution!

I really like this idea! I think it could almost be a symbiotic relationship because Couchers could help keep wikivoyage pages up to date (and create new ones!) while also putting the information to good use.

At the same time we would also want a mechanism for Couchers who are active in the community to be able to post the most relevant information for Couchers specifically about their city.

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Hi Jesse,

Thanks for your welcome, and your response. And I do agree with you on Couchers needing to add more couchsurfing-relevant info.

If the possibilities exist for the devs to integrate WV (wikivoyage) in a way that generic information is imported/mirrored/called directly from WV and then another layer of Coucher-relevant info is lapped onto it - that would be perfect (sorry I for the lack of tech terms, but I think you get the idea). For example, (just an example) WV has accommodation section for every city/town which lists updated info on recommended stays, with information about expected price, phone numbers & website. This could be layered with the info about available hosts, events, and travelers.

But of course, I have no idea how difficult or complicated this might be to implement. Or what will be the best no-frills, no-pitfalls way to go about it.

Also, I wasnā€™t around much when these legendary ā€œold city pagesā€ existed on CS. So I am a bit unaware of what those specific requirements might be.

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Iā€™ve seen there is a Stay safe and a Cope section for every entry in WikiVoyage. Weā€™ve discussed how to provide information on staying safe and emergency contacts in Private safety link. Could be one option to connect and curate the details on WV.

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It seems can indeed pull the text from WikiVoyage, hereā€™s an example API call.

We wouldnā€™t be able to edit easily, because you need a user account there. But we could have Couchers specific additions which are editable, and encourage people to add to the pages directly on the WikiVoage website.

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Thatā€™s exactly what I was thinking of! And had similar arguments in my mind. Wikivoyage is the first think I open while travelling to a new place. And since, like us, itā€™s non profit, maybe they would even be keen on linking our cities groups to their cities pages in the future, why not?

Fully approve connecting groups to Wikivoyage!

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sorry to necro old thread, but iā€™m browsing the entire forum and yeah, although iā€™ve never used favorites on CS i did add some of my favorite spots on my profile, now because iā€™m not verified it says itā€™s a beta feature and only available for paid users, still i think my text is still visible

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This! We put so much effort into creating a large repository of local information from the best places to visit, where to buy things, hire cars, emergency and medical info, they where super helpful. It was heartbreaking to wake up one morning to find them gone with no warning.

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Absolutely! I spent HOURS creating a wiki about Madison, Wisconsin and all of the resources that would be helpful to couch surfers and one night, without warning, it all disappeared from the couchsurfing website. I was very upset to say the least!

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Agreed:

I think it should go in this direction!

In the past in the group guidelines you had not only guidelines about was was expected but also Local information from local members which have given much better information also on not so much tourist locations !!

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Could not more agree!
Itā€™s exactly what made CS then so great.

It was much better than every LP / RG etcā€¦
guidebooksā€¦

Local information with local juwels not mentioned in tourist pages!

Coming ā€œsoonā€

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3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Do you think asking for any kind of donation is a good idea?

I donā€™t like this ā€œGeneral Informationā€!!

Why it is so important to use the Couchsurfing ā€œwordā€ so much?

Isnā€™t it enough to write that this is The ALTERNATIVE to CS and that it was founded after the other page started to pit up its paywall?

As I mentioned above.

I liked it very much in the past, that e.g. I went to Zurich or Paris, or Medellin etc. I used the I search function to find the local Groupe.

May this could be done much better nowadays as it has to be built up first. We should have not only the function to search by words - instead of having a world map with the 5, 6 or whatever continents.

I travel to Colombia and I want to have information or looking or a hostā€¦
May in the main page you have the world map. SO, I klick to South America, it pops up South America, now I choose the Colombia as country and now I have the 32 departments so I click in Antioquia (Medellin) and there will pop up a list with all main cities, tourist attractions etc. (beforehand surveyed with local people) ā€¦ etc.

What I want to say actually :rofl: is, South America should have a Forum with integrated local guide general information, every country should a main forum with local guidance, and all Districts and main Cities and Tourist areas too!

So, the Local Guides would be broken down from continents down to small places!!
It was like this in CS. The only problem then was that everybody could create new groups with forums - that was a mess.

And this information should not be integrated in wiki, it should be integrated in the page directly

This functionality is planned, but we are just taking it one step at a time :slight_smile:

Itā€™s just placeholder text, copied from couchers.org

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Thank you for your answers :slight_smile: appriciated a lot

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