BeWelcome censorship

[[Wiki.trustroots.org]] is an independent wiki with information for people who are actively exchanging hospitality.

BeWelcome is quite an open and transparent organization compared to CouchSurfing and Hospitality Club but one could say even here there are cases of censorship in BeWelcome.

Moderation team

BW's forum is moderated by the moderation team, which coordinates itself in a private group. Its creation date is mid/late 2012 (?) and was not debated in the forum.

Removal of posts

  • In March 2013, cross posted invitations to seek the duck (a toulousan event promoting BW) were deleted by a member of the moderation team.

This opened a discussion about moderation.

Local members later reposted the message in their groups, and it was made sticky, which made it very visible for a while, but the moderation team refused to admit a mistake (source?).

It can easily be claimed that this incident itself is not censorship as only cross posts were deleted, and at least one of the post was kept which is less of a restriction of your freedom of speech.

Banning of members

In December 2012, Tim Loal, notorious (some would say infamous) for being vocal about the management of BW, was banned from the forums for 1 year. This ban was the first of its kind and happened after repeated violations against the site's official terms, 3 official warnings and 2 short-term bans which had separate warnings and were lifted to allow for better behaviour. A protest group FREE TIM NOW ! was created.

Member profiles that are created solely for sending spam to other members are banned from the site on a daily basis, usually after abuse is reported.