35 & Over Room - Badge Lock
Hey everyone. I wanted to let you know that we will be badge-locking the 35 & Over room shortly. This is due to many reports about ongoing, unsupportive behaviour in this space.
To access the room, members must have one of the following badges: Helping Hand, Supportive Smile, Friendly Face, Wise One.
Listeners/moderators will be able to access as usual.
I will post below to confirm when this change has been made.
Thank you and happy chatting! :)
@Heather I am incredibly disappointed that this happened. Really I just feel like all the air has been knocked out of me. As a person who really wanted this room, I'm just flabberghasted that people over 35 were not supportive of each other. Wow.
@magicallySmiles50
@magicallySmiles50
I think you missed the whole point. It's not age. Anyone was able to come to the room. Any age. Some came to cause trouble. The room is at the top of the list. Also members come in because other rooms are empty. People have come in just to troll and upset members. I have been personally told I'm old and fat and so greedy that I ate my stillborn baby. That was a huge trigger for me. I enjoy being in the room. I get so much support and understanding there. Personally age is not important to me, rather maturity and kindness. Coming on this site for the right reasons.
@warmheartedTurtle6662 Okay I probably did miss the whole point. I've spoken to Heather privately about the issue.
@warmheartedTurtle6662 Well stated turtle. Such age "shaming" and bestial behavior has no place in any room on the site.
@magicallySmiles50
unfortunately, it was not just people over 35, there were way too many 20-odd year olds being disruptive, argumentative, and unsupportive. yes, there were 20-year olds being supportinve too. it wasn't an age-related thing.
@berry1900 As I said I have spoken to Heather privately about this matter.
Why don't you badge lock it with the SUSTAINABILITY Badge. People who are PAYING to use this site are not intentionally looking to cause problems. Sure, I have BPD and I am easily annoyed by stupid comments or people trying to give me advice or tell me how to think. But if you want to have a safe community room for adults, then why not make one room for paid members only? Is that so hard to do? Teens aren't going to pay $100 a year to come in and bully adults. (Assuming I understand what's happening here from all the posts)
@ImWorthy
I dont think people should be forced to pay for somethng to get support because not everyone can afford to pay... and teens dont interact with adults at all!
@ImWorthy It's worth you starting a new thread to advocate for a separate "payers only" chat room if you strongly believe that would be of value to the site. That's how we advocated for the 35+ room in the first place. The entire community listens, and the community leaders and liasons DO pay attention. If that is where your interests might lie at this point, why not give that a try?
@ladylazarus1971
Because I honestly don't care enough about this anymore. I'm new here. I don't use the chatrooms. I asked a question for my own personal understanding and now it's escalated into some argument and I can't be bothered to continue this any longer... My issue isn't with you. She's pushed this borderline past the point of self-control.
All I'm saying is that I just joined, I paid for 2 years because they had features for older adults, and now one of them is gone.. I have fewer options.. I want a refund. This has completely wasted two hours of my day, in which I needed to be working on my research. (Not your post, the entire thing... I wish I hadn't even commented now to ask for clarification of a feature I've never used). This is why I don't deal with forum crap either. So I paid for 2 years... and all I do really is use the growth path. I expected all the paths to be uniquely different from one another but they are not. I feel cheated, to be honest. But hopefully the money I paid to the site will help other people who do actually use chatrooms and forums and whatever else....
[edited out inappropriate language - MissZ]
@ImWorthy
I am well over 35 and my question is. .if you don't usebthe rooms n youbdo not care why are you posting and responding so viciously to another opinion or someone trying to clarify? Its actions suchvas yours that cause a room to become locked. If its nont in ur interest stop engaging. Be the adult
@Heather thank you for this .. yes few people are really creating mess in so many rooms, hope such action help people to understand "how to create a friendly atmosphere with others"
@Tiky ... @heather
I agree. A problem I'm already having with the similar badge lock for "Relationship Support" room is that then those people who would more properly be in the Rel Sup room come to other rooms and spill their problems on us :( I've been in the 35 + room like once because I was looking for someone, but .... either way, all the ways, yes @heather @laura @admin peoples, this is a problem. :(
@cyanPlatypus6370 - We'll get the badge lock changed on Relationship Support and 35 & Over so that people need only the Group Chimer badge to enter. This is just 5 group chats and is easier to achieve quickly, whilst still keeping the room safer.
@Heather ... I hope so. Thanks for your reply!
@Heather how does this make any difference? Not being facitious am asking HONESTLY.
@cyanPlatypus6370 yes I can understand and relate .. its really unfortunate that i got some complaints against particular people , happy to see admin people are really concerned and finally taking steps against it ... thank you @heather
@Tiky ... yes, I agree. I was about to give up on this particular thread b/c I don't spend a lot of (ok well not any) time in 35 + room, but this thread seems to now be being used just to argue. Sad.
Anyway, Tiky, I agree. Go admins! You guys have a hard job too. ~ Platy
I think this is a good call.those who still want to use it will be able to soon.It won't take long. This will help
I am not sure it will make much difference since it doesn't take longbto earn the 1st badge no matter ur age there should maybe be a maturity badge so you can enter your birthday and have it somehow confirmed to inlock an age based room. I also don't totally believe age has anything to do with it. If someone wants to gain access to cause issues they will. Some of the biggest troublemakers have been on the site for a long time time and know how to skirt the rules n other protections. I think someone should focus on that instead.
@Heather is it possible to have 2 different badge options to unlock the room? The current one and the other coming from the life stages section of the forum?
I was also new to the room and I am so upset that it's gone because I was making actually some connections and friends in there hopefully I will be able to earn the badge to get in there soon or figure out a way
I would have enjoyed this room being over 35 and I too just paid.
I don't know what's available to me because I'm a paid member. Somewhere there's a solution to this.
I am still pretty new to all of this and am well over 35.I don't really know what badge locked means or how to get one to access the chat room. It sounded like a good idea to have an older room though
@Heather
interesting solution.
I'm not sure this will really solve the issue, but I give you credit for trying something.
As we are allowed to be free on this site with our ideas and views, I want to honestly say that this idea is not good, and it's not going to change anything at all. Most of the people who are unsupportive and disrepectful already have theses 'badges' all this is doing it stopping new members who actually have a meaning to go into the room and connect with other people within they own age range.
This seems to happen a lot with the rooms like with thinking space is now a locked room yet people only have to post in a forum and BOOM! You are allowedto go into that room, And it's happened in many rooms before.
And before you ask, no i don't have an idea about what we should do. I think it's to late to do anything now. It's the same people who do the same thing in that room( Only like 4/5 of them?) Once they have grown up then the room will more then likely go back to its ownself- Yes i may be wrong. but this is what i can see from being in the room and lurking init.
It's not even about age like people have said before ^ Because it is few members over 35 who are starting the drama plus the 18-21 year olds.
@Username2016
for me trolling is one part of the issue only.
having a space to talk to people who have had similar life experiences and can identify with what i am going through and can support me is the issue.
for example, i've been told "age is just a number" by younger folks in the chat room when discussing issues i have had related to age. that is a very dismissive attitude to take and has left me feeling hurt and invalidated on many ocassions.
As for the "age is just a number" thing, you could always explain to them why that's not true. They probably didn't mean any harm and just needed to be informed on how things really are.
@Username2016
for me trolling is one part of the issue only.
having a space to talk to people who have had similar life experiences and can identify with what i am going through and can support me is the issue.
for example, i've been told "age is just a number" by younger folks in the chat room when discussing issues i have had related to age. that is a very dismissive attitude to take and has left me feeling hurt and invalidated on many ocassions.
@Username2016 Yep, and that's why I keep saying that it takes more than a quick fix tactic. I mean, it might help stop trolls from creating accounts over and over, but that implies that there was a mod there that kept giving them mutes over and over. When there is no mod in there....that's when there's an issue. Someone (and let's be honest, that someone who has the intent of trolling is probably from a specific room that we know is famous for this behavior) can just stroll in there and have their fill of entertainment by hurting people. I guess the best thing to do in that situation is to either mute/ignore the troll until they get bored (DO NOT show your hurt around them, that is their fuel) or, IF you are a strong and witty enough person (if you've been toughened up in the presence of so many of them that they don't affect you anymore), beat them at their little game without taking the room too far off track. I've seen both these methods be pretty successful when there's no mod available.
