WWoofers leaving early

I guess you just write in either the main section or 'Other information' something like: 'I expect you to honour commitments and not leave before your arranged departure date'. This does seem to be an increasing problem - there is another similar topic in this forum. I don't actually have any easy solutions to discourage WWOOFers from leaving casually like this, but there does seem to be a need to look again at the 'WWOOFer Commitment' we have on the site.
To allow us to monitor these probems please let us know when this happens and also send us the names of the WWOOFers. We can then follow-up with them if necessary and decide if it is worth warning other hosts who are expecting them. As we don't know where they will be going, we may need to extend the feedback system to WWOOFers.
More thoughts and opinions on this would be very welcome.

it is not a written contract wwoofers have sometimes some people are just trying to be polite ???

we only had 1 couple take off so far (for a week in the middle of their 3 week stay...) but it actually worked out for the better - we were happy to get somebody else instead of them - or nobody at all. Or at least so we thought.... But the ones that came after them were even worse!! Actually ended up sending them away, they caused so much damage and had no common sense at all...
I think it'd be great if hosts could leave feedback for each other's info/warning!

When the whole question of feedback was first mentioned some of us suggested that it was appropriate for feedback to be a two way process both for wwoofer and host.

We did look at the whole issue of feedback very carefully and listened to your opinions. Here are just a few more of my own thoughts about it.

The main purpose of feedback is to improve the WWOOF experience for everyone. So far, we have not published any negative feedback about hosts. If negative feedback has been received, we have investigated it and taken appropriate action ranging from asking hosts to make changes, issuing a warning or suspending them temporarily or permanently. We have also taken similar action if issues about individual WWOOFers have arisen.

Feedback is most useful when placements are being arranged. Feedback about WWOOFers is unlikely to be available at that stage.

I do get the impression that those most in favour of feedback for WWOOFers are thinking of situations where negative comments would be left. I wonder exactly what action you would take if you read something negative about a WWOOFer? One lesson we have learnt from experience is that there are always two sides to every story; refusing to accept a WWOOFer because they arrived with negative feedback from their last host would not, in my opinion, be justified until the situation had been investigated. As has been said elsewhere, hosts DO have a way to inform us about problems - it's the 'Contact us' button at the top of every page. We do respond and we have all been extremely busy over the last few weeks with a variety of issues.

One difficulty is that we don't know exactly where WWOOFers are going to because placements are arranged individually and there is no record of them on the website. If hosts can ask where WWOOFers are going there is always the option of contacting each other to exchange information, and hopefully that would often include praise for good WWOOFers.

Although this topic is about WWOOFers leaving early, we certainly don't want the reverse situation where WWOOFers are left with nowhere to go because there has been a problem. We all have a responsibility to take care of (usually young) visitors to Ireland whatever we think of them. Except in extreme circumstances, it's not fair to turn WWOOFers out without anywhere to go and we do ask you to please get in touch with us if a problem arises so we can try to make alternative arrangements for them.

None of this addresses the problem of WWOOFers not honouring commitments - but I really don't think reciprocal feedback is the answer.

I absolutely agree! We don't want it to turn into a bit of a "getting your own back" session. Who's perfect? There are always going to be situations we're not so happy with, but these are more than balanced out by the good times we have with WWOOFers.
The only thing we need to establish really, is a sense of responsibility to each other. We know, for very good reasons we can't just evict a difficult WWOOFer without notice, they need time to find something else.
They need to understand, there are ramifications if they just pull out without giving their host opportunity to find replacements.
Truth is, for the most part, with give and take on both sides WWOOFing works incredibly well, and is overwhelmingly a positive experience for us all.