Transparency
The statements and opinions on this page are solely those of its authors and do not necessarily represent the official position of CouchSurfing International.
Ideas about transparency in CouchSurfing.
- We need more transparency.
It is a well known problem that getting the information about what is happening within CouchSurfing out to everyone is not happening. Several solutions have been attempted but people still seem unhappy. What can we do to improve this?
Discuss this page in the Brainstorm group or on the talk page. Or just click edit to improve this page.
Problem
Public outcry for transparency from within CS
Solutions
Open 'core volunteers communications' group to be readable by any interested member
Open All groups except groups involved with Safety and Security (database/Server)
- This will send a message that all members on couchsurging are equal and there is no Core Admin Inner Circle and No Ambassador has more decision making rights than a normal member. This will show that couchsurfing is transparent and democratic and treats all members equally.
Infomation Dissimination
In Groups
- Do a search for the most logged in members and the most active members on the groups . Approach them and ask them to be involved in the communication network.
- but do the most active online members truly represent the community at large? Most active hosts and surfers simply don't spend enough time online to be hooked onto groups at all times. This being said, I do believe involving the members who do seem to be actively bringing up ideas and are interested in developing them further should be heard and enabled more Anu 07:58, 10 February 2007 (EST)
- Most Admins and Ambassadors are not involved in the community and group brainstorming. This gives a feeling of secrecy .
- Most admins are busy dealing with admin duties to be all over groups.
- Therefore other member need to be delegated the task for information disimination
- Most group questions are only answered by a few ambassadors if they are ever answered. Never by an Admin or founder.
- Most groups are populated members other than ambassadors (so, more inclusive). There is contact us section for when you have a question concerning Admins of Founders.
Direct feedback
This would be hard, but not impossible.
Contact us questions:
- Allocate different time zones to members (who will have the required information or who can call the necessary contact to get the required information) who will man the special contact us chat room.
Through chat:
- There is no room in chat which is manned 24/7 by a group of ambassadors/core members to communicate and answer questions.
Reduce voting
The Ambassador post allocation is secretive and give an impression of cronism. Lots of examples to support this claim.
- There has been a process followed allocating the new ambassadors onto different levels. You can see the requirements for each level on the The Levels of Ambassadorship page
- The document The Levels of Ambassadorship does not include the voting process.It should include disclosure of voting code and systems.
- who said anything about voting? There is a process on choosing ambassadors based upon qualifications and executed by people responsible of ambassador management. More transparency in terms of who is making these decisions and based on which additional rules/guidelines other than the published qualifications by each level would be a good thing.
- Transparency is a critical part of achieving publicly verifiable elections. Transparency is also necessary for member observation
- The integrity of the voting process is critical to the functioning of a democracy
- Who ever said CS is functioning as a democracy? The organizational structure is just forming and at this point in time the "governance" of CS has not been defined in a clear way (but most probably should be)
Remove the exclusivity of a Collective
Global Participation
- At present entire global couchsurfing community are looking at the working at the CouchSurfing collective through a looking glass.
- What_Have_You_Been_Working_on_Today being the only document they can see through the looking glass and this gives an impression of an exclusive group who have the money and resourse to travel to New Zealand only have the decision making powers in policies , new features,new ideas which will be implemented,Coding .
- Have daily conference calls with ambassadors who in turn have con-calls with their regional members.
- there are direct contact methods listed on the New Zealand Collective page (email would most likely work the best) - so going through ambassadors is a bit of an overkill. If you come up with specific questions people would be happy to answer them. Anu 07:58, 10 February 2007 (EST)
- The current contact us options on the New Zealand Collective page
- email to collective@couchsurfing.com No response
- What was the content and tone of the message? I'm afraid general non-targeted, non-constructive undirected critique without specific questions to answer is difficult to respond to.
- Go to the New Zealand Collective chatroom of the CouchSurfing Chat. No such Chat room
- Point taken, should remove the link then.
- Skype user couchsurfing.collective Not functional--Sue20001sa 14:02, 10 February 2007 (EST)
- Collective house has limited bandwidth per month and Skype for some reason, when left open uses a lot.
Get the Financial Balance sheet published
- The CouchSurfing Organization - Finances, of 2004 and 2005
- - Not just the Balance Sheet, but Financial Reports documenting Cash flows, expenses, stipends. We do want more donations don't we? Not many people will give without full transparency. --azarethroy 23:06 (GMT+1) 10 Feb 2007
- See Finance.
Existing transparency is limited by the NDA. However, some developers are actively involved in:
TODO:
- Create a public email list with all commit comments, so that anyone can see what developers are working on.
- If the source code will be released under a free license we can even include the diffs, so that everyone can see the exact changes.
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