Talk:Hospitality service
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 [1] * Hospitality Club -- 386,550 [2] * GlobalFreeLoaders -- 56,961 [3] * Servas Intl -- > 13,000 [4] * TravelHoo -- 6,954 (March 29) ...shut down? [5] * Warm Showers List -- 5,036 [6] * BeWelcome -- 3,076 [7] * Pasporta Servo -- 1,350 [8] * 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,
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,
I added the note again with a recent newspaper article as additional reference[1] to support those facts. I think, together with the above points, it is sufficient to mention BeWelcome here (opposite to the above claims that Wikipedia is used for ‘advertisement’ only). In my view there are enough things that a) show that BeWelcome is not just another network (and adds additional value to this entry) and b) that it can be seen as a natural evolution of hospitality exchange/services. However, the future will show if this network (and construction) will be successful. --Aaida (talk) 13:41, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
A volunteer deciding to start their own website does not make a split. heck 6 volunteers do not when there are hundreds of volunteers working towards putting back in what they personally get out. It's clear that you want to position this new website next to the established ones like HC, CS, Servas etc, by making any attempt to draw connections that you can. None of the networks have split. Your website is not connected to them other than the people who started it had volunteered some time along with hundreds of others. As for natural evolution, what you say sounds like marketing material: it's meaningless. This aggressive single-minded push of multiple members of your organisation is what makes wikipedia sometimes an unwelcome place to be. But luckily there are many members here ready to clean up such acts, as has happened with your posts. I'm not going to rehash great arguments that have been put forward to you again, other than to say look at the difference between people putting a balanced page together here and your aggressive push to overrepresent just one single website without any care for the dozens of others out there. Interesting isn't it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.167.155.3 (talk) 14:48, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
- Please log in and try to find a consensus in the post and not just undo edits as it is welcome here on Wikipedia. I changed the main article regarding the point about "split of" you raised, this is for me understandable. Further, I have to point out that I am in no way associated to BeWelcome. My interest in this issue is hospitality exchange and I do not care much about the network disputes. Am I right with assumption that you are affiliated with HospitalityClub? About the other "dozens of others out there", they will come after we solved the arguments here and come to a compromise. I do think it is important as it produced quite some discussion here on the talk page, I do think there is quite some truth in both sides. Hopefully I can count on your help (afterwards), that your interest goes further then solely blocking new or controversial points (that do not fit in your agenda). --Aaida (talk) 07:41, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
You clearly are presenting a biased view. For a start, you are only concerned with adding one new barely known website. Your bias is clear; you are not interested in updating this page to be reflective of the hospitality service concept, but to jump in and add promotion of a website over dozens of others which are more established. Your own website ( hospitalityguide, yes? ) clearly presents an extremely biased view towards websites which are centrally run, and in fact focuses much of it's attention on this point in an overly negative fasion. In addition, your bias is further exposed by your claim of it being a "natural evolution" -- words that really have no meaning, no scientific or factual basis, other than to emote your idealogical preference for organisations which are democratic rather than centrally structured. Your statement of not caring about networks disputes seems somewhat nullified by your edit making unreferenced and seemingly gossip driven attacks at just one individual in one organisation. I strongly suggest you do the following: have a good, solid, comprehensive read through the wikipedia guidelines. And then keep them in mind when making your edits, which have been poorly worded, unreferenced, biased, emotionally worded and everything that wikipedia tries not to be. Re logging in. I have read wikipedia guidelines quite clearly and this is not a requirement. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.167.169.2 (talk) 10:07, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
- I changed it back. Sure, I can have a different view then you have. That is normal, but does not change much. That is also a Wiki and not centrally structured. To your comment, I am not biased towards it, but it extends this article in a logical way. I can see no reason why those points should not be stated (as they are as well referenced). I do give more credit to the fact that things are stated in the newspaper article (e.g. the point that there quite some previous HospitalityClub core volunteers involved and not just merely users as you argued here). Additional, I do find the note that the founder of HospitalityClub brings in important as well (BeWelcome took the design and money). If you think differently, please handle and prove this for every part. Hopefully we can reach a consensus soon. --Aaida (talk) 14:35, 29 April 2008 (UTC) PS: I would prefer if could log in and use a registered User for the changes and discussion. Therewith, I know that I do discuss with the same person and do not waste my time with some random clown. Thanks.
lost discussion
Could somebody include those lost deleted parts again (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Hospitality_service&diff=next&oldid=208722827). Thanks! I do think this has to do with the fact that I included the 'POV' in the main article. --Aaida (talk) 15:03, 29 April 2008 (UTC)