HI,
Thanks for the great service and web site.
One frustration when looking for hosts is that people are listed as Available hosts, but when you read the description it looks like they are actually on tour, and thus not available.
I have recently emailed 4 people nominally hosting in our area who look like they are on tour and asked them to update their profile to make it easier for potential guests to find people who are actually available.
One has indicated that it seemed that they had somehow been automatically reset from "Not available" to "Available" - is this the case?
If there was some mechanism to have a periodic check by region if people's hosting status and description are in line that would be great. I would be happy to act as some sort of regional coordinator to cross check this information, if there was a system for doing so (keep track of who has been checked, whether they have been asked to confirm their status, and see if there has been a status change)
Greg
I'm not a developer here so I could be wrong but I think they might've been set automatically to available on the date they entered for the end of their tour - I'm not really big on that feature but I guess its supposed to make members feel as though they should host at some point, not sure how useful it is though.
What has happened in the enormous growth of the last few years is that we have taken on a huge number of members who have no intention of hosting but are marked as available as that is the default setting for new sign ups - I think this really needs to change. Additionally in a recent new feature poll, one of the top features voted by members was a mechanism to automatically disable hosting availability after response rate falls below a set percentage:
https://www.warmshowers.org/feature_poll
Also recent discussion on filtering feature:
https://www.warmshowers.org/node/126522
Hi Greg,
I am a developer and I can confirm that there is a feature to automatically change to a user to "Available" based on the date they said they would next be available. There is a plan to remove/rework this in the future.
There are also a lot of issues in our development list to make looking for an active host more efficient. We hear your frustration, please be patient while we work on this, thanks.
In other news we'd love your help in any way you can offer, please keep an eye on the next newsletter and on our volunteer page, which we need to update a bit but it's a good place to start - https://www.warmshowers.org/volunteer
Andrew