Guide Guidelines

The CouchSurfing Guide Guidelines are no set of fixed rules. We have to find them while making the CouchSurfing Guide bigger.

CouchSurfing Guide should primarily be a useful Guide for CouchSurfers.

What Makes a Good CouchSurfing Guide?

We're looking to create a resource appropriate for new CouchSurfers who are traveling to areas they are unfamiliar with. This guide, created by local CouchSurfers, would help these travelers find the things that traveling Surfers would be interested in. Is there a regular meeting place for locals CSers? How about a place with free WiFi? What about discounted or free city tours that aren't as boring as most of them found in guidebooks?

Free city maps, metro guides, and local information sources are always a nice thing to include as well.

In keeping with our mission, we'd also like to let incoming travelers know about opportunities to make a difference while stopping by. What local volunteering opportunities exist for a short-termer? Are there any regular workshops that someone might pop in on? These are the things we'd love to let travelers know.

For countries, regions

• Consider using the country template for country pages. It unifies the look a bit, and makes navigation easier - adds links to other wikis and the corresponding group, something that usually appears on the left sidebar, but can't be seen when accessed through couchsurfing.com/wiki.

Information about the hosting culture

• How to be a good guest
• How to be a good host

General cultural differences, for example

• In South America young people usually live with their family, so you will often be hosted by families.
• In many countries Internet is only used by richer people.
• Are there any things a single woman should take care of, or expect? Can she prepare herself in some way that will facilitate her stay? (i. E. Female Travellers in India)

Couch information

• Do locals tend to get hammered with lots of requests every day? Are there neighborhoods or cities that are nearby that Surfers might miss but should seek out for a couch?

Special information

• Someone who is interested in Indian television or NGOs in India will probably be able to find a lot of information using Google. On the other hand, if there are Indian CouchSurfers who have good contacts with, or are even working for NGOs, that would be extremely useful information for a CouchSurfer who is interested in contributing to the Indian society.

Cities

Short general Description

• Consider using the city template for city pages. See explanation for country templates above :)

Information about CS activities

• Local CS-Group?
• Local Events/Meetings?

Guides

• Must-see events
• Surfers with special tours, skills they can teach, volunteering opportunities, special interests ...

Transportation

• Local maps, metro guides, walking tours, local websites, etc

What Else?

So what's missing? Please discuss your ideas and let's get a move on!

Delegation

Some things are more at their place at other sites, especially when there's already an active community.

• If it fits in Wikitravel, put it there
• If it's about hitchhiking, put it in the Hitchwiki

Sometimes information is already available:

• For languages, point people towards free sources of information such as Wikibooks or the Wikitravel phrasebooks
• For television, point towards Wikipedia, which has articles such as Television in India and List of Indian television stations, or you can create new articles.