Talk:Hospitality service/Archive 1

Original Research?
This strikes me as original research. - FrancisTyers 18:41, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Potential Modification as a charitable service

The concept

At present, the hospitality exchange phenomena is very much enclosed within the purview of highly advantaged populations in the global North. However, it would seem that the kind of people who are at present most interested in using this system: young, educated, idealistic, trusting, liberal, and international in nature, would be very much inclined to convert at least some of their tourist time to volunteering overseas in a worthy cause.

Let's just say group of Americans students from Austin, Texas wanted to drive across the U.S.-Mexico border, travel for a couple of months on their summer break in Central America, and do some good works along the way. If they went to the Internet to try and find some locations conducive for volunteers in their position, they would be summarily disappointed. There are options available for volunteers, but they remain highly formalized. In fact, most programs require that you pay a fairly large nonrefundable fee (often exceeding $300) up front and stay for an extended period (at least ten days or so). Furthermore, they require extensive documentation and institutional references. These restrictions would likely deter these students from pursuing volunteer efforts at all and they would likely fall back onto the hosteling/tourist circuit exclusively. There are many worthy causes to be found (educational, environmental, organizational, structural), especially in poor nations, but they aren't well publicized outside of the local community in which they take place.

A potential issue could be that the training required for many volunteer opportunities is extensive, but there are certainly jobs that require far less. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) may be reluctant to involve short term, non-paying volunteers because they have more structured continuous programs requiring many extraneous adminstrators who must receive a salary. However, there are many needs in poor countries that cannot be filled by NGOs and their programs. This is especially true with short term projects. Many of these services are organized by local churches, which may attract some faith-based volunteers from abroad, but may also put off potential non-religious volunteers. Accommodation sharing could connect truly grassroots community development projects with potential volunteers from the developed world. During their stay, they could lend skilled and unskilled labor and reap the benefits of a truly rewarding relationship with local peoples in need.

What needs to be done

An action research approach will be used to test the feasibility of integrating accommodation sharing with community-based development projects. The first step would be to choose and screen different potential programs with different environments, requirements, and themes. It would be necessary to sample a diverse array of settings in order to determine how differences would affect the overall experience of hosts, volunteers, and the projects themselves. This demostration project would be undertaken with the support of one accommodation sharing site which would create a special link on their home page with an explanation of the project and links to the profiles of different host organizers. Volunteers would be screened through the same accommodation sharing format as the general user population. The organizers would have full discretion on who to invite, but the process they use to select invitees would be recorded. Perhaps it would be possible to line up a potential "volunteer circuit" through multiple programs in the region.

The variables in programs would include: wealth of nation and locale, rural vs. urban settings, nature of work performed, its purpose and ideological justification, size of project, skills and funding of organizers, skills and demographic background of volunteers, linguistic conditions, living conditions for volunteers, and the duration of their stay. The data collection would be decentralized, having no lead researcher in charge at specific sites. Participant observation and personal journaling would comprise the primary methods for gathering information about ongoing activities. The local organizers and volunteers would both be required to keep these kinds of detailed records of their experiences, which they would duly record each evening on an individual basis. In addition, all participants and organizers would be asked to write an autoethnography about themselves and their expectations before participating in the program and the conclusions they came to about their experiences after they had left. These materials would then be sent to a team of qualitative data analysts who would code the information for specific themes and call participants to discuss/clarify their experiences in a debriefing session. When emerging themes reached a near saturation point, their analysis would inform an in-progress research report that would be shared with organizers at the specific sites. Furthermore, this information would then lead into face to face interviews with organizers/participants and on site focus groups including both groups.

When all programs had reached completion, the data would be compiled into a comprehensive report assessing their benefits and shortcomings of the programs along with concrete policy proposals for the future. This information would be first distributed to the organizers, who would be given the opportunity to review and comment. These suggestions would be taken into account in the final version which would then be made fully public and translated on the Internet.

comm
i'd just like to say, i think this wiki is great. it's extremely informative and encyclopedic. i think some commentators may say the formalization of "for example, you may [... ...]" to describe things isn't very encyclopedic, but i think the whole thing here is great. bye.

Please add reference or remove this phrase
Amarent, why do you once more add "very subjective evaluation by -- who seems to be fighting some sort of personal battle with Hospitality Club founder Veit Kuehne" without adding a reference? Guaka 02:20, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Interesting article to refer to: Emotional Tourism
An interpretive study of online hospitality exchange systems as a new form of tourism, by Paula Bialski. Guaka 02:44, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Possibly unencyclopedic phrase
I've removed the following phrase as possibly unencyclopedic "website about some hospitality networks with a very subjective evaluation by - - who seems to be fighting some sort of personal battle with Hospitality Club founder Veit Kuehne". The comments about "very subjective" and "fighting some sort of personal battle" would appear to be editorializing as defined by WP:WTA.Addhoc 13:24, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

number of users
can we do a quick calculation here? please edit figures & total if out of date and add the source: Data retrieved on April 7, 2008 (unless specified otherwise) * CouchSurfing --      501,172 * Hospitality Club --  386,550 * GlobalFreeLoaders --  56,961 * Servas Intl --      > 13,000 * TravelHoo --           6,954 (March 29)  ...shut down?  * Warm Showers List --   5,036 * BeWelcome --           3,076 * Pasporta Servo --      1,350 * WWOOF --                 800 (March 29, 2008) * LGHEI --                 500 (March 29, 2008) * Homeshare Intl -- -   * TOTAL:                975,399

Keep in mind that while members may overlap, many of these services' entries are also actually couples using a single account.

If someone knows how to make this into some kind of spreadsheet (autocalculating) table, that'd be great. My apologies is this qualifies as original research, i couldn't find this from a single source.

the wikitravel article, it is also very informative.Brallan 01:00, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

AFS?
AFS could be regarded as the a hospitality service. What do people think, does it fit? If so, the history is prior to Servas. Brallan 00:08, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Links to hospitality services
Recently this site appeared in the description and listing: http://www.thefriendshipforce.org/

YOu can see the added text with this diff:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hospitality_service&diff=205282742&oldid=204023855

I haven't heard of this site before. But looking at the homepage it lists a bunch of travel packages which can be rather expensive. Take this one for example: Southern Brazil May 30 - June 21 Estimated Price: $ 3,000 - for all 3 weeks, from Phoenix, AZ or $ 2,580 from JFK Bill Kram, ED, bilnpnky@juno.com, Phone: 623-974-0614 Join the Friendship Force of Central Arizona for three weeks of exploring the beauty and culture of Brazil. Our journey will begin with an optional guided tour of Iguacu Falls and Rio de Janeiro, two of the top destinations in South America.

That doesn't exactly seem to be what this page is about. Also, it notes connecting 300+ networks together. But when trying to search for networks the page does not respond. So I could not confirm that or even look at any of these networks.

As such, I have removed the content and opened it up for discussion.

--203.31.232.2 (talk) 02:17, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi people, I have a problem with the few links to other hospitality services of which no wikipedia page exists. I consider them as link spam. Why don't they have their own wikipedia page? Maybe, because they are not relevant enough? If so, why do we need to link to them? Let's take BeWelcome for example. Until recently they were in Beta mode. And until now they don't publish any numbers of members. -- Splette :) How's my driving? 00:07, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I think it would be fair to also mention smaller hospitality services. There aren't that many anyway. I see your point though, that it might be better to list only those that have their own article. Cheers, --spitzl (talk) 17:23, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
 * "Let's take BeWelcome for example. Until recently they were in Beta mode. And until now they don't publish any numbers of members." http://www.bewelcome.org/whoisonline.php -> 1948 members, this is publish since I know the page. BeWelcome has more members then "Pasporta Servo" for example and is worth mentioning it because it s a result of very motivated volunteers who have worked in both big Hospitality Exchange Networks (HC,CS) and get the good experince from this work into the new project. Fabzgy (talk) 02:44, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I also think it is worth mentioning BeWelcome, and maybe-maybe other networks like Place2Stay and Stay4Free, in the article. After all, they are mentioned on http://www.hospitalityguide.net/hg/site/?sid0=networks as significant hospitality exchange networks. I also wonder why there is no Wikipedia article yet on BeWelcome since it seems like it is a strong and potentially very significant community which has attracted many active volunteers both from CouchSurfing and Hospitality Club.--Sigurdas (talk) 13:40, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

there are far more "very motivated" volunteers existing in CS/HC. Having some volunteers does not a good example website make. New sites should establish themselves before using themselves as example networks. Otherwise, it's just too much of the old "using wikipedia for selfpromotion and advertising". I also note that both fabzgy and sigurdas are volunteers for BW, whch they both neglected to mention in their views above. And hospitalityguilde.net is not a reputable source of information according to wikipedia's rules ( note also that the owner of that domain is a bw member themselves, and frequently post anti HC/CS stuff around the internet ). Passporta Servo is a specialist network, just for esparanto speakers, so of course their membership will be small. It is however a great example of a niche network.
 * BeWelcome is the first and, as far as I know the only open source hospitality network, thus working in the very same spirit as wikipedia. Isn't that worth a mention? regards, --spitzl (talk) 21:45, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * No. ( google: Results 1 - 10 of about 193,000,000 for "open source" )

--Jyhegron (talk) 10:45, 2 February 2008 (UTC) Wikipedia is not a place for advertising, they are plenty of social networks which appears and disappears : Ok, but I think that if one exist for at least one year, has a growing amount of members, and has real activity it must be considered in the hospitality service page.

It is important to remind that HospitalityClub has a policy of censoring (just check the news in this independent place to have an idea). Hospitality Club was the biggest network until it was replaced by CouchSurfing for this position. The HospitalityClub policy was very clear : doing everything possible not to allow HospitalityClub members to speak or inform other members about other networks. To figure it, just look how COuchSurfing allow to speak about HospitalityClub while HospitalityClub forbid to speak about other networks saying it is blatant promotion.

I am not sure it is important to speak about these polemics in the foreground (and I will not start it since I have a partisan opinion) but definitively wikipedia must reflects this reality they are many networks (if these networks are real ones and are working).

-- you are a founder so of course you think that way. i looked in HC and see lots of mentions of CS and cross HC-CS meetings, so your claims of censoring seem unfounded. I searched around the internet and most claims of cencorship come from the forums some years ago. Interestingly, two founders of BW were the forum modertors back then. So, the censorship team seems to have moved to this infant network. edit: wow, actually it seems 3 of the people from "those times of censorship" are trying to create this new site. How interesting these claims are...

I see 0 people logged in there, it's hardly an active network.

This isn't a page to list all the networks out there. There are tons, and most of them are much older than your personal project which has only been some months out of beta, and has a fraction of 1% of the membership base of the established networks. This is a page about hospitality service, and it is absolutely not necessary to provide an extensive list of networks; that's advertising, not providing examples of well established networks.

Wikipedia is very strict against advertising. Please stop trying to overrepresent your project here.

Here are some guidelines for you, since this is really just following rules:

Not a mirror of links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_mirror_or_a_repository_of_links.2C_images.2C_or_media_files Not a directory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_directory SockPuppet#MEtapuppets rule ( since most comments on this point come from high-level volunteers of your organisation, you are effectively trying to create concensus from a single biased view. Metapuppets are recruiting "friends" who share your view.  Multiple organisational people for the project clearly fall into this. ) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sock_puppetry#Meatpuppets

And finally, that project has attempted to have it's own page created in wikipedia and had it removed since it didnt meet the guidelines for new pages.


 * If we want to list only networks that have at least 50,000 members (why that number?), we must remove "Servas". (13,ooo members ) I hope you see where this ideological fight is leading. I hope also we can cool this a little. It's really not that of a big deal, whether one or more networks are listed or not. Besides, please sign your posts. --spitzl (talk) 14:28, 7 March 2008 (UTC)


 * good point. Servas is the original it serves excellent historical relevance.  The goal here is to adhere to wikipedia guidelines about having a directory.  Given there are dozens of websites out there about hospitality exchange it is both ugly to include a list of them all, and it is against the guidelines of wikipedia which works very hard not to be a free advertising space.  For generalised network samples, two clear metrics are long-standing and large numbers of members.


 * BeWelcome has now more than 2600 members (this information is public an easy to find as stated before)
 * that is less than 1% of the population of CS. A tiny number for a world-wide idea.


 * It is a very active
 * anyone can write a blog.


 * It is the only project open source for hospitality exchange by now
 * this page is about a concept that extends beyond the internet. this page is not about open source software.


 * It was started in 2007, but it is now translated in 14 languages (watch the website), so it is more than a "going to disappear project"
 * many sites are multi-lingual. And it did not even appear on the internet until 2007 and was in a broken state for a long time marked as "beta".


 * I of course restore the cancelled information, they are two kind of sorting for listing the general active networks, Alphabetical or By Size, I used alphabetical since size is subject to change.
 * that doesnt' even deserve comment. What you are doing there is clear to anyone.  The website you started is about a year old and has less than 1% the membership of the larger sites.  And of the dozens that could be listed your website is well off the radar.


 * it should be pointed out that the person above is a) an X high level volunteer of HC, and b) started the BW website with some friends. Attempts to politicise wikipedia will be ignored.  Perhaps your website would like to have just 1 person giving an opinion instead of having multiple people who run the site coming here to give the impression of consensus.

back on topic
The question is not is it worth including a specif new website in this page, but rather what needs to be listed in a page that is a generic idea of hospitality exchange. Wikipedia guidelines are very clear on using pages in this way. The page is about an idea. That idea extends well beyond websites. To come in here and list websites is essentially attempting to get free promotion, and the links don't help the understanding of the concept but rather distract from the purpose of the page. A few simple google searches reveals there are literally dozens of websites out there involved in the idea of hospitality exchange. That is why only a sample is provided.

Servas -- the longest existing known website out there. It also has a wikipedia presence. Couch Surfing -- the largest known network out there. It has over 400,000 members. It also has a wikipedia presence. Hospitality Club -- the second largest network out there. Formerly the largest. It has over 350,000 members. It also has a wikipedia presence. Global Free Loaders -- a long standing network with a large user base. IT does not have a wikipedia presence.

That is quite a good sample: it gives people an idea of what is out there with regards to websites, and also directs people to the most popular networks: ones that have existed for a long time, and have a very large user base and lots of activity. They are good criteria to trim the list of dozens so that this stays merely as an educational sample list rather than an attempt to clutter the page to become a directory listing.

The point here is to follow the guidelines and not turn this page into a directory listing. It is not the purpose of the page; the purpose of the page is to explain an idea that extends beyond the internet and webpages anyway. Given there are dozens of websites about this idea, the sample is just that: a sample,

Specialised networks are also useful too. Their specialised purpose is stated there very clear and it is quite obvious how they are specialised.

As pointed out a couple of posts above: what we have happening here is some of the people involved in operating  a very new and very small website coming to wikipedia and trying to add their page here to gain free advertising. What is even more amazing is how some are attempting to politicise discussions.

The bottom line is this is not a directory, nor is it a page dedicated to websites who offer hospitality exchange services. The list is a sample of long standing websites which have large membership bases, and that sample excludes dozens of websites which makes this page adhere to wikipedia guidelines and stay on track as an informative page of an idea. Of the dozens of websites out there, those 3 or 4 are clear candidates. Every newer website can twist an argument to say why they are also special, but the bottom line is age, activity and membership base are unambiguous measures, and clearly relate to the topic of this page.

The correct place to include a comprehensive list is a page whose purpose is a) to be comprehensive about websites and b) a place that doesn't have specific rules against such listings. There are other websites out there that do that: but they aren't as popular for some reason.