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Couch Planner

The statements and opinions on this page are solely those of its authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of CouchSurfing International.

This page is a Request for Enhancement. It is a draft. You are encouraged to find support for it, etc.
After the enhancement has been clearly articulated, and all affected portions of the website have been identified, you may try to persuade a developer to implement it. After implementation it will be deployed somewhere, but not necessarily to the main website.

Couch planner was one of the big ideas and developments by the European Collective. When searching for couches, the user should be able to add in his “shopping cart” any persons worth to be host and then be able to send them a request. Templates were also developed in discussion as to avoid impersonal requests too. The couch planner then would for each host selected before giving an answer like :

  • yes
  • maybe
  • no

with a certain degree of probability so that everyone in the cart do know where the guest will actually land.

Contents

Why

  • A personalized CS needs this feature, that's what I think, so more people feel attracted by the range of possibilities.

How

  • I'd suggest to keep some kind of limit to this list, like couch-request-messages being online for a maximum time of, say, 72 hours or so.

Can be very handy for people already travelling.

  • We could add a flag in the users' profile like "I'm willing to receive area requests"
  • We could also set a limit to the number of area requests a single user can send out, either setting a cap to the size of the cloud (e.g. max 20 users) or to the number of such messages per day/week.

Advantages

  • Makes CS working both ways, which makes it even more fun.

Disadvantages

  • Possible spam by creating a list and sending a request to all the users (which is common in Globalfreeloaders)
    • Can be overcome by making it "pull" instead of "push". I.e. interested hosts can actively go to the site, instead of getting messages. Though some hosts will want to receive all messages anyway.

Comments

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  • Use of calander similar to the Google calender who eliminate the need to send requests. --Mentor 23:15, 15 August 2006 (EST)
    • Would be cool if it can integrate in some way, some XML data format that can be imported in different calendar applications. Guaka 01:11, 16 August 2006 (EST)
  • There are numerous site that have an open API... Instead of spending loads of time to design something ourselves maybe we can use those sites and integrate them in the CS site. I'm thinking of EVDB [1] and Eventfull.com[2]. They can be used both for personal planning as for planning of events. --PMgD
    • Basically good idea, preventing reinventing wheels continuously. But: I'd prefer my personal data - and I do consider such a planning/hosting data personal - be kept at CS instead of outsourcing even if there might be useable APIs available. So, for me, this feature lives and dies by sticking to the CS in sense of privacy. I'd restrain from using it if data crosses virtual borders. Runia 13:51, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

See also

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