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Comment by Nimitz14 | Hacker News Reader

I honestly don't think the paywall was such a bad idea. The barrier to entry was too easy, there were too many people on the platform who had no intention of hosting and were just looking for a free place to stay. The very small contribution at least ensures some level of commitment.

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When I hosted (2008), we were very active hosts that summer and we basically required people to write personalised messages telling us who they are and why they like the sound of staying with us specifically. We got a lot of generic copy and paste messages and we ignored them, since we got so many messages. For about 3 months, we were hosting people almost every single day, often multiple people (and the most at once was 12, for a weekend while there was an event on).

This worked very well and the only "bad" experience we ever had was one of those 12 people that stayed the weekend of that event was.. harmless, but a bit unpleasant and odd, and that was because we relaxed our vetting a small bit for that event.

And honestly, I don't know if I would have paid for an account at that time, as an active host. I got into it because my housemates were into it and when we were planning on moving in together, we discussed it. If it had cost money to join, I can't imagine we would have bothered, certainly not all of 5 of us.

With that said, nowadays, I think some barrier to entry would make me feel more comfortable with it. Back then, in my early twenties, I was a bit more relaxed about sharing my personal space, I guess.

It isn't a bad idea per se, but it was contrary to everything many vocal coachsurfers stood for. It was a movement as much as a community, I knew lot of hosts that were mad about it because they felt they were monetizing not the service, but the trust network people built therein.

does it really? wouldn't paying lead to more entitlement from surfers?

It's too cheap to be a barrier for those people. I still see that type of people here, because they pay 2.5 euros for one month and they have a chance to stay for free in many places. It's still worth it. I also still see all the predators that are just using CS as tinder, because its cheaper than tinder. What I don't see are the long term travellers on a shoe string, who are some of the most interesting people in the community those are gone. Many other types of interesting travellers are also gone out of principle. We're left mostly with uni students and middle class people who travel once in a while. The community has changed completely since the paywall, and not for the best.

I don't think you're getting more hosts this way though.

I was trying to set up my new place for hosting when I ran into the paywall. Didn't want that. Now I'm hosting on Couchers.org instead.

The people who put up the paywall also had no intention of hosting; they were just looking for free money. They're the same kind of people you're complaining about, just orders of magnitude worse.

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