From the CouchSurfing Wiki, an informal workspace which anyone can edit.

Contents 1 Please note: 1.1 Introduction 1.1.1 Ground Rules 1.1.2 Answers to the Questions 1.2 The Questions 1.2.1 CouchSurfing's Mission 1.2.2 Leaders Team Policies 1.2.3 Board of Directors 1.2.4 Organizational Policies 1.2.5 Tech Policies 1.2.6 Financial Policies 1.2.7 Volunteering policies 1.2.8 Collectives Policies 1.2.9 Inclusiveness and Communications 1.3 Questions for Ambassadors 1.3.1 The Questions

Please note:

The Leadership Team will not be checking this page for updates. Instead, we will be checking for your questions submitted to the CouchSurfing Policy FAQ.

Introduction

This is a public document that anyone can edit. It is a place for CouchSurfing volunteers to submit questions to the Leadership Team about CouchSurfing policy. These questions will be answered by the Leadership Team in the form of an evolving FAQ document that only the Leadership Team can edit. However, if anyone feels that an answer in the FAQ is not sufficient, please add a new question to this document to request a more specific answer.

Ground Rules

These ground rules are not meant to limit anyone's expression, but to define the scope of this document. These rules will help avoid confusion and misunderstandings.

1. Questions Only
   Please use this document to ask questions, not to answer them, or to comment on them. There is a separate forum for commenting on the answers to these questions. Commentary in the form of a question is still commentary.
2. Respect & Compassion
   No question is stupid or invalid. But please ask questions in a respectful and compassionate tone. No one will be criticized for asking a question in a respectful manner.
3. Short & Concise
   Each question should boil down to one sentence. The shorter the better. If you find yourself writing a paragraph, then it should be broken into separate questions or your question should be made more clear.
4. Policy Oriented
   These questions should focus on policy, mission, and volunteering concerns. This is not a place for general questions such as "How do I upload a photo?" Those types of questions can be answered by Ambassadors and should be posted to contact us.
5. Don't Delete
   Don't delete anyone else's questions. When questions are answered by the FAQ, they will remain on this document, but crossed out like this. However, please do feel free to reorganize questions into useful categories or to group highly similar or identical questions next to each other.

Answers to the Questions

Answers are posted to this FAQ. Please note that the Leadership team will take every question seriously, and take time to answer them thoroughly. You might even pose a question that the Leadership Team never thought of. Therefore, please be patient. New answers will be added to the FAQ as soon as the Leadership Team can write them.

The Leadership Team desires to be as transparent as possible. But inevitably, some questions posed here will be unanswerable. For example, "What are the root server passwords?" obviously cannot be answered because the answer would make private member data insecure. It may also be possible that the Leadership Team doesn't know the answer, or hasn't decided on an answer themselves. In this case, the answer will be provided as soon as possible.

The Questions

Please post your questions below, and be sure to follow the ground rules above. If you added a question to this document and don't see it below, check to see if it has been moved to a different category before reposting.

CouchSurfing's Mission

1. Where did the mission come from?
2. What does Version 1, 2 or 3 of CS mean, and is this about software or the mission?
3. Will CS always be free to join?
4. What is the vision for what CS will be in 5, 10 or 20 years from now?
5. When was CS first developed? What was that like?
6. Has everything gone as the Founders expected that it would over the years?

Leaders Team Policies

1. Who are the members of the Leadership Team and what does the Leadership Team do?
2. How were leaders picked, and are they just a bunch of Casey's friends?
3. Will members of the "Leadership Team" be appointed board member of CouchSurfing International Inc.?
4. Are leaders leaders for life?
5. When we reach 15 leaders, when can new ones be accepted?
6. How often will you have meetings?
7. Will the agenda be published beforehand?
8. Will there be minutes published of the key decisions made at the meetings?
9. Who will determine what constitutes a "Policy violation" that excludes candidacy?
10. New leaders have to be accepted unanimously. How will "critical" leaders ever get in the circle?
11. Why wouldn't these leaders be elected by a vote of ambassadors, volunteers and/or members?
12. Why do the ambassadors have to vote for a tech team coordinator? Why can't the tech team do this themselves?
13. Do Leaders appoint themselves?
14. Why is the Tech Team Leader not chosen by the Tech Team?
15. What happens if a Leader gets hit by a bus?
16. How do I get my questions answered? How do I find the appropriate representative in the Leadership Team?
17. How can I become a member of the Leadership Circle?
18. How much work does the Leadership Team put in every day or week?
19. What will the Peer Review System entail?
20. How many conference calls in a row, or within a 12 month period, must be missed before a Leader is voted on for removal?
21. Can a Leader send a voting Alternate in their place if they cannot attend a conference call? Or can a Leader send a representative of their specialty to at least participate in the meeting if the Leader cannot attend?

Copied from Leadership Team Questions - to be edited.

• Will these new members of the "Leadership Team" be appointed as directors of CouchSurfing International Inc? -repeat--Shameless Heather 00:44, 18 May 2007 (EDT)

• Are leaders leaders for life? -repeat --Shameless Heather 00:44, 18 May 2007 (EDT) When we reach 15 leaders, when can new ones be accepted? -repeat Do they have to wait until someone quits or is voted out? -not really a question, a speculation on the answer to #5--Shameless Heather 00:44, 18 May 2007 (EDT)

• How often will you have meetings?-repeat Will the agenda be published beforehand? -repeat --Shameless Heather 00:44, 18 May 2007 (EDT)

• Who will determine what constitutes a "Policy violation" that excludes candidacy? -repeat--Shameless Heather 00:44, 18 May 2007 (EDT)

• Why wouldn't these leaders be elected by a vote of ambassadors, volunteers and/or members? -repeat Why do they appoint themselves? worded differently because saying "why do" implies that a leader appoints him/herself. Explanation of how leaders are appointed is covered in another question.--Shameless Heather 00:44, 18 May 2007 (EDT)

• What will the Peer Review System entail? A 360 degree survey? (Casey, Leadership members, and volunteer team members all filling out the same survey on the person)--not really a question, a speculation on the answer.--Shameless Heather 00:44, 18 May 2007 (EDT)

• I noticed that 4 months inactive status qualifies as a potential removal of a Leader. How many conference calls in a row, or within a 12 month period, must be missed before a Leader is voted on for removal? This is an important question because projects can be significantly delayed if a vote is unable to be taken on an important issue because the key person is not present. --commentary on question--Shameless Heather 00:44, 18 May 2007 (EDT)

Board of Directors

1. Who is a member of the Board of Directors?
2. For everybody besides Casey: why?

Organizational Policies

1. How are decisions made, and can I be a part of the decision making?
2. Why not a flat-out democracy for the whole community?
   • What is the CS peer review system going to look like?
3. What is the "Employee and Volunteer Agreement?" What's all this hullabaloo about the NDA?
4. Who needs to sign the "Employee and Volunteer Agreement?"
5. How does CS feel about the other networks such as Hospitality Club, Global Freeloaders, BeWelcome, etc.?
6. Does CS censor anyone?
7. Why is there no due process on any matter whatsoever: all decisions are made anonymously in an ad hoc format with no possibility of review since there are no community rights and no community equity, and sometimes those decisions can effect individuals lives. There are parts of the world where it is a bit more dangerous than Surrey on Thames or Dobbs Ferry on Hudson.
8. some people have free time and go and stay a while at a collective at community expense and get ten dozen vouches, where others work their butts off but live in outer god's country, nowherestan, and work for a living, and will never get a vouch no matter how much blood they shed for CS?
9. Why, if you just happen to live in Yuppy Flats Apt. downtown somewhere you get to be city ambassador for 25 million people, but if you live three kilometers away across the line in a suburb you are hamlet ambassador for some cows and chickens?

Tech Policies

1. Why isn't CS open source?
2. How can developers own their own contributions (co-ownership)?
3. Why is disclosing trivial information about the operating system not permitted under the NDA?
4. How many Developers and Volunteers have quit as a result of this new NDA?
5. Is the departure of Volunteers indicating to the Leadership team that something is wrong here, and that the NDA should be adapted to suit?

Financial Policies

• How much money is made from donations, and why are the 2006 figures not released yet?
• Where's the money going?
• Who's getting paid?
• How much are they getting paid?
• Are there other costs incurred by CS besides servers?
• What cost are the servers?
• Can I write off donations to CS on my taxes?
• Is Casey Fenton making millions of dollars on CS?

1. Where is the transparency? It is basically considered by people who practice philanthropy to be unethical to volunteer and contribute where there is no transparency. NB: A whole lot of people recently have gone to jail for contributing to Middle Eastern educational funds which were not what they claimed to be, for example.

• In New Hampshire, doesn't CS have to file state, local and national income tax returns like any other non-profit, and aren't they public documents? And aren't non-profits required to operate with open books? i.e. Accounting 101=the spread sheet?
• Why have none of the above questions been answered yet by the leadership team??

Volunteering policies

• Do I need to be an Ambassador to join a working group and participate as a volunteer?
• I am interested in volunteering for CS, how can I get started?
• I have tried to volunteer but I haven't found a good way to meaningfully get involved. What should I do?
• I want to write a story about news article about CS, who should I talk with?

Collectives Policies

• Are collectives a good use of CS money?
• How can I participate at a Collective?
• Do I need to sign the NDA to participate at a Collective?
• How can I host a CS Mini-Collective?

Inclusiveness and Communications

• How do you see CS org structure growing and becoming more inclusive, more specifically if it's more top-down and control at all costs or bottom up?

• What you see as dangers in letting the "lower levels" organize themselves more independently (ie letting people start things themselves or at least form meaningful networks on their own so they can start working together when the time comes) rather than pulling the strings from above?

• Where do you stand in regards to communication and openness? What are your greatest fears in letting the community (whoever wants to know regardless of "status" within the organization) see some of the discussions or any other "classified" information? Any ideas of how to improve this?

• What are the communication bottlenecks as perceived by the admin group towards the outside world? Through which channels is each approached most? What types of questions are most asked in these personal communications? Any ideas on how to improve this? (FAQs, more public dialogue, bidirectional feedback channels, more "in-between" people to handle informing the public, ...?)

• why are so many internal communications to volunteers phrased in language inaprpriate to family audiences, and why so often are people told off by one person in front orf others rather than back channel. What happened to basic netiquette.

• why are there NO posting standards anywhere on CS, and no way to know what is or is not off-topic as no topic standards are published anywhere: meaning food fights and flame wars, the natural consequence of no standards and no "no-nos"

• it seems there is nowhere where CS makes any attempt to get and communicate a sense of the consensus of the membership. I have so often seen members (usually people completely unknown to the person speaking even) referred to in the worst possible terms by people supposedly acting in official capacities: Can't these denigrating characterisations of members somehow be ameliorated at least. ???

Questions for Ambassadors

The questions below have been move here because they can be answered by any CouchSurfing Ambassador. If you need an answer to one of these questions, please visit the help page or the contact us page.

The Questions

• What steps does CS take to protect my personal information?
• Is my credit card information secure?
• Why have servers been down and slow?
• How are the statistics calculated on the front page?
• What kinds of servers does CS run on? Do they cost a lot?
• Can I get verified in person?
• Can I get verified without a credit card?
• How many users sign up a day?
• How many people log in every day?
• What's the difference between a collective and a CS gathering?