It's a bit too easy to lament how the quality of surfers has gone down as the community size has grown. While couchsurfers today are a more diverse crowd I think exposing the idea of couchsurfing to people who aren't you stereotypical backpacker is not necessarily cause for lament. Sometimes all it takes is a nudge in the right direction for them to become involved too.
I was active myself on the old site and after a couple of years break I've decided to start again now that I have the space to easily host. During the few months I've had visitors stop by my flat here in Edinburgh I've had the pleasure of meeting a great amount of very different and almost always interesting people ranging from poor students on their first couch surfing trip to a guest hitch hiking overland from China to classical musicians from London to a travelling Blues Dance teacher.
Being in a cultural hotspot like Edinburgh I naturally receive a lot of requests, many of which looks blatantly copy/pasted. However since I decline most requests for lack of time anyway it's not much effort to filter through and find the people who seems like they are interested in meeting me and invite them in.
So at least speaking from my own experience I don't think there's any cause for alarm over the quality of the people on couchsurfing. But then again, I always found the meetups to be dreadful. As for the site itself I find the redesign annoying and wouldn't mind switching to a better site if any good contender came up, but so far the community on CS however much in decline is still much more active than any other site I know of.