Talk:Hospitality Club censorship

24.08. Hospitality Club keeps on blocking messages containing CouchSurfing, see HC Censorship.
Hmm, we have just tested it, we immediately got each other's website promotion in our inbox and five minutes later in our email. To be sure we have also sent a promotion message to grappig, maybe he can report, too. (Anyway, we will be notified if it was blocked, so we will know it even without grappig) In general it would be nice to learn about the sources, since in the past quite a few rumours that were not true at all were spread on this site without any proof or source. (not saying that everything was / is wrong of course)

Cheers, Claudia


 * Indeed, I got your message:


 * "Hey there,


 * have you heard of couchsurfing? It's sooo cool.


 * claudia"


 * I don't have my "spam check" set to "medium" (the default), like amylin had. And I guess neither do you (or Frank) have your "spam check" set to default. Or the "spam check" has just been modified. I would definitely be happy in that case.
 * The message on this page is what I got back, exactly like this. It also contains the exact message I wrote to her.
 * What proof or source do you want? Shall I forward you the message? It's all electronic, so it's not gonna be proof enough ever. In fact, anything you get to read on the screen can be tampered with. Using cryptography (GnuPG) for verification would help a bit though. The best proof would probably be going through the code, but unfortunately it's not available for download. Guaka 20:02, 31 August 2006 (CEST)

[Well it would already have been a bit more precise to specify that what you are saying refers to levels 1) or 2) of the spamchecking options, but not to 3) If people WANT there messages to be checked, maybe they even WANT promtion to be filtered out. I just don't understand people complaining about the spam check if they still have it turned on... Thanks for confirming anyway :-) Claudia]

[Just checked again the entry in HC censorship:

"As of August 2006 Hospitality Club is still censoring its users. Messages containing the word "CouchSurfing" are considered "website promotion", which is considered spam, and thus deleted. Here's what Guaka got when he sent a message, only containing "Check out CouchSurfing my dear!", to amylin, who has her spamfilter turned off. Note that this is a big improvement, since members are actually informed about this censorship."

I suppose amylin has NOT yet checked her settings after three levels of spam check had been introduced? - Claudia]


 * She did. She just put them back to the default settings to see if CouchSurfing is filtered out by default. The funny thing is that Ebay and other websites are accepted.
 * I think that most people don't change the default settings. And are thus subject to somewhat peculiar spam filtering rules. Guaka 06:46, 1 September 2006 (CEST)

For the record, both Amylin and Guaka are part of the "inner core" or primary clique, at CS. These were not simply random HC members, but diehard CouchSurfing members, attempting to prove a point. Their motivation in this simple experiment is suspect, to say the least. Still disappointing to see that HC is censoring any internal message traffic, whatsoever. This policy is heavy-handed and unnecessary, IMO. --84.16.233.47 01:41, 15 September 2006 (CEST)


 * Funny, that I'm considered to be a "diehard CouchSurfing member". Maybe I am. (And yet, I'm not even a "CS Ambassador".) But before I knew what was happening to HC messages, and what the founder of HC thinks of democracy I was seriously thinking of being a "diehard HC member".
 * What's suspect in trying to prove a point?
 * If I would suspect the same thing to be happening in CS, I would try to prove the same point. And probably find people to start another hospitality exchange site. I just think, that at the moment, CS is definitely the way to go. CS allows me to come up with ideas and realize them. Guaka 10:01, 18 September 2006 (CEST)

Less black and white please
I don't like the style of this article. It very much comes across as a personal thing, not a piece of factual information. We need more experiences, maybe even blind test statistics, that clearly point out the differences of legitimate spam filtering vs censorship, and the exact conditions for when a message is being delayed / censored / marked as spam in one or another network.

The examples are also not the best, imo.
 * "Check out couchsurfing.com" really has no value beyond promoting this website. The equivalent would be to send "Check out skype, it's cool". Especially, if this is your first message to a person (which probably the HC spam checkers did not research).
 * "Please send a message via couchsurfing.com, because I don't check my HC messages that often". That's already a very different story, because now the recommendation has a context and a practical use within that context. If you can find out that such messages are censored as well (or have been), bingo! You have proven a point. Otherwise, the statement of this article needs to be phrased more carefully.

What remains is the controversy of human spam checkers looking into someone's messages. It is an optional feature, but still, it is controversial.

Thanks, Lemon-head 05:58, 16 November 2009 (UTC)