I've been going to CS meetings for years and they've always seemed the same to me. Half residents (foreign and local) and half travelers. Most are there because their life, or the times, don't allow for making easy friendships, thus they get several of the benefits w/o the commitment.
At this point, personally, I end up making a few 'friends' and then sitting at a table or in a small standing group with half friends and half travelers. The friends part means I don't have to ask those hostel-type questions to every single person I talk to (where are you from, how long are you here for, what are you doing here, when are you leaving).
After some time, no matter the city, I start to realize who has been hooking up with/is interested in whom, and often times, one realizes most are there for a combination of this and the easy social aspect.
...
As for the site, their new redesign messed up a lot of functionality and completely did away with crowdsourced data from the communities. The CS city groups have totally become a "let's go get drinks since I'm in your city for two days" type thing, not to mention travelers are constantly asking the same questions and since CS took out the search function, including the previously mentioned deletion of years of crowdsourced info/tips, the site & quality of content has just gone downhill.
After the redesign, links to groups were deleted (meaning they restructured the URL hierarchy and how one part of the site connects to the other). That's almost fine, as long as they implement a nice search functionality and allow access to hundreds of backpages of user-created posts for each city group, etc...only they didn't. They totally deleted all that crowdsourced data (the posts) and threw the search functionality in the trash (search is a horrible user experience now).
In summary, by crowdsourced data, I mean when someone asks where the best park is (for ex), they might get several viable answers from locals. After a few months, this post gets buried but with search it can easily be found again.
At this point, personally, I end up making a few 'friends' and then sitting at a table or in a small standing group with half friends and half travelers. The friends part means I don't have to ask those hostel-type questions to every single person I talk to (where are you from, how long are you here for, what are you doing here, when are you leaving).
After some time, no matter the city, I start to realize who has been hooking up with/is interested in whom, and often times, one realizes most are there for a combination of this and the easy social aspect.
...
As for the site, their new redesign messed up a lot of functionality and completely did away with crowdsourced data from the communities. The CS city groups have totally become a "let's go get drinks since I'm in your city for two days" type thing, not to mention travelers are constantly asking the same questions and since CS took out the search function, including the previously mentioned deletion of years of crowdsourced info/tips, the site & quality of content has just gone downhill.