Abolishing the 'Visitation Team' Was Very Likely a Major Decision-Making Mistake of Mine!

In the responses to my recent call for opinions, most people came out in support of restoring the visitation team, which made me realize that KangAi Commune's abolition of the visitation team was very likely a decision-making mistake worth deeply reviewing.

When I made that adjustment back then, there was plenty of opposition too, but I was determined to carry it out, driven mainly by considerations of compliance and of human values. On one hand, I wanted to do my utmost to protect the privacy of families that had unfortunately received aid and to avoid in-person visits causing further disturbance to families in difficulty, which I believed would in the long run be harmful to the cause of critical-illness mutual aid; on the other hand, I wanted to avoid public-opinion and compliance risks, preventing offline visitation activities from being misread as the existence of a physical offline organization and triggering unnecessary political and compliance controversy. At the time I was certain that, relying on professional third-party field investigation and public case disclosure, we could fully guarantee that cases were genuine and maintain members' trust, so I chose the safer course and abandoned the visitation team mechanism.

But long-term operating experience has proven that we clearly overestimated the credibility of written disclosures and third-party reports, and also overestimated members' inherent trust in the platform. The core foundation of a mutual aid community has never been merely a standardized verification system; it also comes from the real, tangible connection and witness among members. A third-party review can only produce a cold conclusion document, with an opaque process and weak public perception, naturally tending to breed members' doubts and suspicions—a shortcoming that no institutional process can make up for.

Objectively, the decision back then carried no ulterior motive; it was an ordinary, stability-seeking choice under special circumstances, and a compliance-versus-vitality trade-off that every public-interest mutual aid platform must face. But we overlooked one key point: members' spontaneous visits and witness are the most down-to-earth and most credible source of public trust—they can both corroborate the authenticity of a case and make the goodwill of mutual aid visible and tangible.

Purely to avoid risk and hold the compliance line, we cut away the core element of community participation. It seemed to eliminate a hidden danger, but in fact it slowly eroded the community's foundation of trust. This also reminds us that platform development must not focus only on compliance and risk control; while strictly upholding rules and protecting privacy, we must also explore ways of operating that better suit the community's character and bind people's hearts more closely.