User talk:Alex
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Hey Alex,
Great work! I hope we will be able to release the whole wiki under Creative Commons in the not too distant future. In the meanwhile, you can put {{free-license}} on your user page. GuakaCS 16:46, 8 January 2007 (EST)
- Thanks, that I have been looking for. --Alex 17:27, 8 January 2007 (EST)
I love the balance icon! - JoeEdelman 20:25, 23 January 2007 (EST)
- Thanks. Keep it in mind (and keep on adding it where it is necessary) to work towards a balanced future! --Alex 04:25, 24 January 2007 (EST)
stranded travelers
Hi there Alex. Yes there are multiple networks. There are only two active networks with over 50k members though. In fact, over 350k members. It's not a matter of favourtism, it's a matter of pragmatism. I can see your concerns about it being promotion. But lets be realistic here. Many members have both HC and CS profiles; and while CS continues to experience outages the best possible chance of people finding their guest/host is through CS and HC, by a long shot.
I dislike the change you made. You have watered it down to being far removed from reality. Most people do not have profiles on "several networks". In fact, merely most people have profiles on just CS and HC. Some networks aren't "rather slow" at accepting members, as you so interestingly put it. But rather membership acceptance is a process run by volunteers just as with CS, and HC has specifically set up an accelerated process to get people in. It is a very real and useful option to stranded travellers who are stuck facing the "CS has broken" page while out and about. You've used the generic term "you may be accepted faster" when in fact it is very true that you will be accepted faster into HC. Your modification I feel is presented in poor light, and not reflecting reality of users and their network habits.
I've modified your modification. Let me know what you think of it.
Hi again Alex. Thanks for your views. I just want to note three things:
The first is that I first want to point out it is not my name, but toniwalia's username. He is Polands most active hospitality exchange member, and is extremely keen in both CS and HC. Given he has offered to put the accelerated process in place, he also signed his name and put his status there to show that he is very active in both, and also that he is obviously the point of contact for any issues around this process.
The second is that while for a single person and with a guarantee of a timely response, sure 1 on 1 is enough. But that isn't reality. We are talking of huge numbers of potentially stranded people, and huge numbers of potential hosts who may or may not respond to an urgent request. In addition, the great chance of finding somebody using the same username is a very strong point -- i would hate a CS friend to miss out on contacting me because they didn't know they could see my contact details under the same name on HC, for example. So I restored the previous sentence, since in fact, you do more often than not need more than 1 person to contact -- especially in an emergency.
The final one is that i note you restored "might accept you as a priority". I need to be quite insistent on this point. It *will be* prioritised with HC, as promised by Toniwalia who is both an hc signup volunteer and a CS ambassador. I can see why you would think "might" is more clear, because you obviously can't make this guarantee for "all networks". So I have clarified that point as being very specific to HC as offered by toniwalia.
Thanks for helping to make this more clear and balanced!--Babso 15:08, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
I must say i still disagree with the 1 person point. I'll refrain from making another edit right now and will sleep on it, perhaps we can find a more balanced way to make the point. But i'll explain the issue I have with it. While it is true you don't need thousands of hosts, it is a numbers game. There are some countries that aren't even represented by smaller clubs, let alone cities and smaller towns. Having say 10 members in a country with all of them being in the capital is vastly different to having 40000 in a country spread across the whole region. Yet, the sentence you have put there is implying numbers are meaningless and also implying choices are meaningless. That is simply not true. More tomorrow. Maybe we can find a more accurate way to say what we both intend.--Babso 15:27, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
