Community » BeWelcome Forum

yeah Ignacio.

I undoubtedly agree with you. There's plenty of "junk" profiles over here.

"So, wouldn't the solution be to encourage or even oblige people to complete their profile if they are really serious about hosting? Does that make sense?"

In my opinion.... yes, it does make sense.

@larifari

i don't like to force people to fill in their profile.

on couchsurfing i couldn't contact a former guest of mine, because she choose to be contacted by full profiles only. i had picture and some text, but that was obiously not enough to have a full profile. i had to fill in every single category, quite ridiculous.

i guess some people have really ghost profiles here, maybe they even lost the password and forgot about their profiles...

other people still might be activated again.

generally i would also hide person in search, that haven't been active for 6 months. especially in berlin and other big place, where are a lot of other more active members...

but in case of a really rare destination with only one member, i would prefer to have this one member with a chance of 5% to get an answer, than to have no one.

is there any chance to program something like this?

I agree, empty profiles is a big problem for this site. I admit that after discovering this site last automn, I did not made a profil with as many details as on couchsurfing.org immediatly. In fact, after receiving on my profile a neutral appreciation out of subjet from a person of whitch I never had any relation, and as this message was not taken off, I thought to destroy my account. The message disappeared after nearly than a month and so I filled better my profile. And a week after, I found my first traveller on this forum.

He subscribed (here and on CS) to the group againts CS to become a lucrative organisation. So, he seems more near from BW. But to find hosts, he goes on trying with CS and it was because he did not find something in Paris that he tried here. Since our very positive contact, he goes on connection sometimes twice a day on CS (I follow his travel watching that) but he never came back on BW even to put an apreciation about me (there is one on CS). I think the few number of people registered here, and the big part of empty profiles is the main reason for him not to use more BW.

But me also, when I spoke with him, I had a rather negative opinion of BW.

On couchsurfing.org thas's a long time I don't receive messages of groups in witch I am (so, no reason to connect when no direct message), I finished by receiving a mail saying that, as I did not connect since (if I remember) 3 monts, my profile was stopped to be shown. Yet he was well informed.

I think we can do the same. Empty profiles combined to rare messages on the majority of groups of this forum gives a bad impression.

To be more precise, I would propose the following rules :
- For new accounts, 3 mails, each one month after the last one asking to fill his profile. The profile would be hidden after 3 months if not filled significantly. By "significantly", the minimum should be half of items filled if no photo, or photo + the quarter of the items filled.
But 3/4 without photo or half with a photo may also be a good choice.
- For existing accounts : not filled since more than a year => warning mail and imediate hide of the profile until the person connect again.
- For non filled account since less than a year, we can send 2 ou 3 mails with a month of interval before hidding.

On the other hand, if an account is correctly filled, no connexion during a long time is not necessarilly bad. It can means that now, the person is not travelling, that for the place where this persons lives, there are few sollicitations, and that this personn does not either need to connect to answer someting in this forum. But if someboy contact this person, may be several hours will be enough for an answer.

Could we move this discussion in a group (e.g. http://www.bewelcome.org/groups/571) ?

Well, I think it's obvious, everybody agrees, that the objective is to get people with empty profiles to fill them out.

Re:  "Could we move this discussion in a group "  - Moving this discussion into a technical group might be good (though I don't see it as a technical but strategic problem), but only if at the same time the people with empty profiles are made aware of their non-participatory nature, and encouraged, moved, persuaded, obliged, or otherwise manipulated into doing something.

So, why don't you send them a message with a copy or summary of our discussion? There's no point in our discussing this if it remains within our closed circle.

It's not necessary to have ALL the sections of the profiles filled out. Of course there should be some leeway.

To anyone even considering joining BW it's a complete turn off to see so many black mickey mouse signs (the icons for profiles without photos), and then even more so if you click on them and there's no text, etc. So why do they appear in the first place? I think you should have a minimum data before any profile can be activated from the beginning. A minimum is just that, a minimum. Everyone is free to add then as much as they want after that.

Another point is whether BW should do more to promote itself. I think it should, but I've noticed there is a general feeling here against that because it would supposedly make us more "commercial" or popular and that is taboo for some strange reason. So we remain "pure" in that sense but if we die, no one will notice it. What a smug attitude. Are there no marketing people out there who would know how to get the word out that BW exists? My critique is that the mere mention of "marketing" ellicits here negative comments and reactions. I'm not talking about selling anything; maybe publizing is a better word?

Anyway, before you even think of attracting people to have a look at the site, it has to be "washed" and put into tip-top shape for the newcomers to have the feeling that there are meaningful and interesting profiles in it.

i totally +1 this.

there are a number of mechanisms we can and should deploy to filter out unrelevant profiles from lists and search results. but as always the bottleneck is programmer workforce. there are currently 2 to 3 people regularly (once or twice a month) contributing code. if you have any ideas to solve that, many things will flow easy. :)

however, the workflow should be like this:

1. you decide on a set of criterias of which profiles are more relevant than others and how this would affect lists and search results
2. you formulate each criteria and its effect on a specific list or search result into a forum thread, even better a trac ticket and prioritise them (be specific, no "show last login people first everywhere", but "show last logged in members in place member list first")
3. we, the coders, implement the most important 3 and see from there :)

agree, but could we ban "facebook +1 picture users" at the same time ?

hehe, where do you get this stuff, cyborg?

Walter: You want a toe? I can get you a toe, believe me. There are ways, Dude. You don't wanna know about it, believe me.

Dude: Yeah, but Walter... 

Walter: Hell, I can get you a toe by 3 o'clock this afternoon... with nail polish.

"it's clearly a bear"

LOL.

I do mind, the Dude minds. This will not stand, ya know, this aggression will not stand, man.