Evolving Our Community Moderation Tools For Sub-Communities!

When 7 Cups first started it was a small internet village. We did about 50 supportive conversations every week. Our community was small, dedicated and supportive. We learned a lot about one another and what our community needed in order to evolve and grow in those early days. Fast forward and this little village has evolved into a small internet city. Many of us have not only watch it evolve and grow, but helped organize and facilitate its growth.

For 7 Cups, growth and evolution as a community is all about supporting members. The more members we can support, the more we realize and embody our mission, which is to be the support system for the internet. We have intentionally built a community where everyone is welcoming, kind and uplifting. Part of the process for doing this was building up volunteer teams who support and organize projects which embody this culture and drive our mission forward. Group support moderator, forum mentor, peer support, teen star, chatroom mentor...etc. all of these volunteer roles aim to create a culture of support and kindness.

The very first project I had when I began this job, was to organize these leadership teams and get volunteer leaders plugged in to help keep our growing village alive with supportive content, events and helpful information for all those who walked through our doors. Over time, these roles evolved. We now have over 700 members and listeners plugged into a diverse range of volunteer roles all over 7 Cups. Over the years, weve added more roles to help accommodate the needs to each team, community and project groups. Its been very cool to watch you all figure this out !

When an online community reaches a certain level of growth, breaking off into smaller sub-groups is a natural part of online community evolution. In October 2016, we launched our first four sub-communities and over the past year, we launched more than 30 sub-communities.

Since August, a 948 members and listeners participate in Sub-community group rooms daily! Altogether, these folks sent 6,262,463 supportive messages in SC group rooms! In the forums, our sub-communities have also been thriving! Since August, our forums have had an average of 247 people participating daily! Altogether, these folks made 76,068 posts in our SC forums (of them, 18,175 were made in check-in threads).

It is clear our sub-communities are doing incredible work supporting members and creating helpful community experiences! We should all give ourselves a pat on the back! Bravo!

Through the past year of watching these sub-communities grow and working closely with the leaders and team members who help to build up these areas of the site, a few problems continue to come up. The problems exist alongside incredible gains with sub-communities. Below I will outline the problems weve seen emerge. At their core, these problems are a symptom of our community continuing to grow and evolve, which is awesome and something we all should be proud of. We are a complex, adaptive system. It is time to start deliberately solving some of these problems for the purpose of building up these sub-communities so that members can get better and more dedicated support.

Problems -

----> Leadership teams in SCs lack effective accountability and are not as strong as they could be because of turnover and under-participation. We work hard to train people in their roles (shout-out to our awesome ambassador teams who support these leadership onboarding processes), so when they drop off or dont show up, its a hit to our system.

Lack of accountability can also be seen in that there is nothing holding an individual leader to their sub-community. Because a forum mentor in the depression community can moderate throughout the forum, they float around. There is no way for us to know where they participate, how much and to what extent. If someone takes on the role as depression forum mentor, we really need them to stay present in this forum, add/ reply to threads, support check-ins, work with forum supporters...etc. At present, this happens but not to the extent that is needed and in the best interest of the sub-community.

----> Lack of consistency in moderation leads to less familiarity between members and SC leaders. We know that when there are familiar faces in communities, members get better support. The consistency in not only moderation, but also content, supporting one another is what keeps members engaged in the healing process. These friendly faces help establish trust. When there is trust, continued familiar faces and a dedication to supporting those who participate in your SC, members get better help.

One possible solution: Create a moderation system where an individual moderates in the project group they have joined and been trained for. What does this mean? For example: a forum mentor in the depression community would only moderate the depression forums and a group support team members would only moderate in the depression rooms. That will allow them to be a more integral part of their subcom that can be more effective as a moderator because they are in the neighborhood so to speak.

As our neighborhoods continue to grow and evolve, we are going to need dedicated facilitators and moderators to take ownership and make these spaces supportive places for community building. One way to think of this is like reddit. There are over a million subreddits. Each subreddit has its own moderation teams (much like us), however, moderation is locked to the subreddit they manage and support. Imagine if every reddit moderator could moderate in every single subreddit? That is how 7 Cups is functioning right now. Because moderation is open all over the site, there is less accountability to your specific area. This lack of accountability results in 1) leaders not feeling fully engaged or recognized in their focus areas of the site 2) members having less familiarity in leadership and consequently getting less support.

Things to keep in mind about this idea:

----> Instead of giving support team members/ group mods & forum mentors the ability to moderate everywhere in the forum right off the bat, wed ask them to really focus in their desired SC area.

----> Wed still keep all of our global moderation roles! With continued experience building up their SC, being present and supporting their community, an individual would be able to apply for a global moderation role. Wed still keep and maintain global moderation roles for group & forums. To start, this would likely be mentor leader role and ambassadors (I am open to other ideas as to who is considered a global moderator as well). A forum global moderator would be able to moderate in any forum area on 7 Cups. A global group moderator would be able to moderate in any room on 7 Cups.

----> As we build up out our sub-community team more and more, its very important that we never lose our central community feel. We need both the center city of 7 Cups and the sub-communities (neighborhoods). To this end, wed take the following steps:

Ensure all moderators are trained in the same way. Group mods still go through the center city to get their training. Forum mentors/ supporters still go through the center city to get their training. After the success completion of an application and training, they will apply or volunteer for a specific sub-community. This process would not change with this update. This process exposes applicants to volunteers from other communities and maintains moderation expectations across the entire community.

We would earmark certain sub-communities as center city projects or center city areas. Ex. Listener learning & journey - this community aims to teach and support listeners in developing listener skills. This is an area of the site we want to continue to build up so that all listeners, no matter their topic interest and listening abilities can join in and get support. Ex. Sites updates, Safety & Knowledge, Kitchen table - these will be earmarked as areas of the site intended to build up the global 7 Cups community.

----> In just one year, we have created roughly 30 sub-communities. We will continue to add more of these communities as their is interest. We will launch communities that fall within the following categories:

Partnership type communities - Young People of Color , NAMI

Topic based communities - Anxiety Support, Bipolar support..etc. (majority of our communities are topic based)

Project based communities - Appreciation & Gratitude, Group Mod Zone, Mentor meet-up, SC leader bubble...etc.

----> If you moderate in more than one area of the site, you can be continue to do that. We all have a few communities we frequent! You will not need to pick ONE area of the site to focus on.

----> Do not think of this as demoting, it is not. It is restructuring how things are organized in the community in a deliberate way.

----> You will still be able to see and participate in the ENTIRE 7 Cups community no matter your role.

----> There have been concerns about group support emergencies and covering for one another. I think this is a valid concern and one I have spoken to @lovelyllama13 about. The goal is to keep our rooms as safe as possible, we will not take steps to reduce safety programs or moderation in rooms where extra moderation is needed.

Where do we go from here?

Share your ideas and feedback in this thread or in this form! I want to work together on this idea. I look forward to hearing from you!

The goal is to start small with this! Pick a few communities to give it a try with and learn as much as possible. We will NOT be rolling this out to the entire site all at once. The idea is to do an experiment with this idea.