"General Hosting" vs "Responsible Hosting" vs "Hosting Circle" vs "Living Room" Naming

Bridget0
Level 10
Redmond, WA

"General Hosting" vs "Responsible Hosting" vs "Hosting Circle" vs "Living Room" Naming

So...I am a native English speaker and the group titles in the subject line convey almost no content differentiation to me. 

 

In digging further, it looks like "Responsible Hosting" is about legal, insurance and governmental oversight issue, General Hosting is everything but also visible to guests and hosts alike (including that cricial time when you are setting up your hosting account but haven't gone live with the listing yet) and Hosting Circle is visible only to hosts who have an active listing. And Living Room is supposed to intuitively mean what, exactly, to a broad international audience? Topics unrelated to Airbnb? Decorating tips for living rooms? A place where we will hear from airbnb directly? A place where we suggest TV shows to watch and popcorn flavors?

 

Ask anyone who has spent time modding a busy forum, even with the CLEAREST of titles people rants, gripes and ads everywhere. This setup is guaranteeing need for a whole bunch of staff spending time shuffling posts around, not economically sustainable.

 

The navigation of this setup is pretty unfriendly for people with lower level tech skills and not intuitive for those of us with them. Using clear pictures and icons in addition to text can help, as well as really distinct language - "Taxation, Regulation and Insurance Discussion", "Private Host Discussion - Open to Hosts Only" " Host Discussions Open to All"  "Offtopic".

 

Airbnb, don't spend time reinventing an online basic - go visit some huge community forums - any major online game, Microsoft tech support, etc to see how interest groups are classied on a major and then more granular level. It has been done very well many times.

2 Replies 2
Queenie0
Level 10
United States

I"m sincerely hoping that these forum names are placeholders only. Making forums difficult to find or to know their content without proper names is more work than I want to do. If airbnb is aiming for transparency, we should not need decoder rings for what forum we should be posting in!

Peter0
Level 10
London, United Kingdom

Sorry I wasn't replying until now but I was at the Open in Paris.  I totally agree.  It isn't unusual to find keen web developers thinking that they can reinvent received wisdom on structures.  Someone first thought of "Contact Us" as a button.  

 

But I do agree with you that the list of topics in this Airbnb forum is very confusing and would encourage the designers to give it a review quite quickly.