I don't think I would have been too happy with a sleeping-porch arrangement. I like it quiet when I'm trying to sleep. Suppose you have a sister/brother who snores, or is sick, or stumbles in drunk at 3am making noise and waking everyone up?
There is only one org at my school that I know of that has an arrangement where everyone sleeps in the same room. Everyone has a bed in the attic - women at one end, men at the other (this is a coed house). One person sleeps downstairs in a private bedroom with an alarm set for 5am. Everyone else specifies what time they want to be woken up, and it is this person's job to wake people up at their chosen times - so there are no alarm clocks in the attic. Being the person who woke everyone up was a house duty that rotated among the members... it was called "arousal".
Each member also had an assigned room in the main part of the house (usually 3-4 people to a room, I think) where s/he could keep personal effects, study, spend time during the day, etc.