Surge in forum activity
I just thought I'd let you know about a couple of things I noticed.
Numbers
Around the time the new app was released on January 13th, forum activity nearly doubled. It went from around 320 new threads a week to around 620 new threads a week. That probably explains why there are now so many threads in Needs Reply 
There were 238 when I looked just now.
I wonder whether this surge in activity needs a response. Maybe recruiting more listeners to reply? (Personally, I don't like form-filling so I don't plan on joining the team myself, even though I do often go looking for threads to reply to.)
Non-replies
I've been noticing a few non-replies being posted recently. By that I mean, a member asks a specific question, but the reply doesn't refer to the member's question at all. 
I haven't checked up on whether people in the needs reply team are doing this. It could be just random members and listeners who think they're being helpful.
I wonder whether some kind of audit is needed to ensure the quality of replies. That would be much more work, of course.
@Listeningsarinn
Charlie
@RarelyCharlie
Thanks Charlie! I'll tag @Mel and @Tazzie :) One of them will be able to assist you :)
@EvelyneRose
Thanks for the tag!
@RarelyCharlie I will look into the issues. Thank you for bringing it to our attention!
It is great that the community is growing! I recently joined via the app, and had no idea about this service before that. I was referred by a list of ways to keep healthy during the pandemic. I think your suggested response makes sense. I have noticed a fair few threads with few/no responses. Recruiting more seems like a good way to address that! The non-replies sounds like an issue to tackle. When joining by way of the app, not a lot of guidelines were given before throwing me in. It seems like figuring out how this place works mostly involves digging into various form threads? I think that could be improved, and I would like to hear your thoughts on it. Hopefully my perspective was helpful, even if I am new to the commmunity and I am sure you're much more familiar with the trends and workings here.
Why do all of my posts appear without spaces between the paragprahs when I put spaces in the chatbox? Argh!
@CatCommander I agree. Relying on forum threads for information is not ideal, but improving on it would require big changes that I think are unlikely.
I once made a fast way to search for information in the forum, mainly for listeners but anyone can use it: Listener information. It might not work well on a mobile device, though.
The lack of paragraphs is a bug in the app. I believe.
Charlie
@RarelyCharlie @mel
Hey charlie, thanks for the tag, i've noticed how needs reply is getting lengthly, last couple of weeks but didn't have an idea on why!
it's good to know participation is increasing and i totally agree that we need more forum supporters and needs reply team members in specific in respond to this change!
I wil bring this to attention of other forum team leaders too, and work on nudging more people who meet the criteria to become forum supporters while asking all forum supporters to focus on clearing their own community's needs reply section
In the meanwhile your second point on non-replies is worrying to me cause it has happened to myself before and it is no fun, but i think that, this is not specified to needs reply team, but mostly random members and listeners of our community, the only thing i can think of in response to this is sending a reminder about this, mentioning the importance of answering the specific question, even if it's by a "i'm not sure, maybe X can answer better", for now, not sure if that would need to be shared with all community or with forum team only, but if you can think of any more effective ways to address this, i'll be super glad to hear ideas❤️
@Listeningsarinn I'm seeing another batch of non-replies today. The best, or worst, is a post that begins:
These days, conversations seem superficial. People say typical niceties…
And the reply is just a typical nicety 
I agree with you that sending a reminder about this seems to be the only thing that can be done, as we don't have tech support, in effect.
Charlie
@RarelyCharlie
getting that response would be really frustrating, and as i replied to affy too, i'm posting a reminder on this for whole forum team today...
open to any further ideas you might come up with to adress this more effectively as well...
@Listeningsarinn I have noticed an issue with the non-replies within the disability support forums, by the needs reply team. This means that these threads are less likely to be seen as needing a reply. Can you please check in with the team that when someone is seeking support to please not respond just to get it off the needs reply if support isn't being provided?
@AffyAvo
hey affy! That's definietly not something we like to see happening, i'll be sending in a reminder to whole forum team today (and remind this again on next needs reply check-in too if needed)❤️
@Listeningsarinn Thanks that's appreciated!
@RarelyCharlie
I often make an effort to reply to forums that don't have one. It is frustrating that the only way for someone to fully clear/tidy up the forums has to commit to being a forum mentor, which is essentially a combination of being a mentor, a forum mod and supporter. Very time intensive and not realistic for most people. Can't forum supporters be more involved at removing spam and more focused on answering general responses throughout the forum, not just in there chosen area? Or do we even need another recognised team? We could simply work to encourage listeners to check the Needs Reply section more.
Unfortunately, since the new revamp of the forums, I believe most listeners don't know how to find the Needs Reply section anymore. That's a big problem. Maybe simplly having a regular weekly notification that listeners can click on that takes them straight to that section would be most useful. 
@ListeningSarinn
@SilentSerenityy
hey there, Thanks for the tag! I'm super gald to know you are a frequent visitor to needs reply section! That is much appreciated! There are 3 points i wanna reply to seperately in your reply❤️
1. Why do we need a specific needs reply team: as you probably know, every forum supporter has the chance to support forums globally rather by choosing needs reply as their focus while applying for forum supporter or by becoming a global forum supporter after one month of their forum supporter role, but not everyone will do that, as mostly they are passionate about a specific subcommunity's topic and prefer focusing and providing support in there, which is totally acceptable and okay in my end, i agree that we need to encourage every one to visit needs reply more (will discuss it more on point 3) but even with that being said, to be able to manage needs reply, having a team of forum supporters passionate about needs reply, and working continuedly only to make the queue as short as possible is more reliable
2.moderation on forums: i understand that forum mentor role can be a hard to commit to role for some, being very right in mentioning that it means being a mentor, moderator and forum supporter at the same time... but about giving the same moderation access to forum supporters i don't think that more than passion into supporting forums, and spending time around them trying to bring more support, and being familiar with navigating them should be expected, more tools and power to access them brings more responsibility, and need for harder criteria, more training and way more commitment, which i'm not sure if it should all be nessecary for all forum supporters
tho if you ever need moderation help anywhere around forums, you can reach out to foruk mentors of specific area, or tag myself❤️
3. Rising awareness about needs reply and how to access it: i'm thankful for you bringing this up, poeple not being aware of needs reply or how to fidn it is something to be taken seriously, i'm aware of this issue, one of the things i found helpful regarding this was answerathon, as many reached out saying they found out needs eeply even existed only after the answerathon! I very much like your idea on weekly alerts, taking averyone directly into needs reply section as well, will for sure talk it trough with forum ambassador *~^
thanks again, for you reply, feedback and ideas and also for your intrest in needs reply❤️
@Listeningsarinn
Sharing some feedback to help;
1, I can create an alert to get the posts responded to.
2. It would be helpful to have a guide highlighting some best practices for supporting members as a Needs Reply Team member.
When I started this thread in February I could see 238 threads in Needs Reply. Now I can see 253 
The oldest thread by a member seeking help is from May 1st, six weeks ago. This is despite the earlier surge in forum traffic falling off considerably (although not yet back down to the levels of a year ago). Is there a plan to deal with this?
On a more positive note, I checked a couple of dozen of last month's replies, and I didn't see any of the dismissive non-replies that I had been seeing previously. I think it's very encouraging that this issue seems to have gone away.
By the way, I did particularly happen to notice a bunch of nice replies by teen listener @EmmaE — impressive, Emma 
Charlie
@RarelyCharlie
aww, thank you so much for the shoutout charlie! i love the needs reply and i definitely think the quality of replies is super important, so i'm more than happy to help out! i'm glad to hear that you haven't seen any dismissive non-replies (:
⋆ ˚｡⋆✿˚ no rain, no flowers. ˚✿⋆｡˚ ⋆
I'm a bit concerned about the Needs Reply queue:
- We just finished an Answerathon earlier this week that got the queue down to close to zero.
- However, just 5 days later, the queue is now back up to ~80 threads.
- This means the Needs Reply queue is growing by an average of ~15 threads/day or ~600 threads/month.
- If our goal is to stay caught up on replies without doing an Answerathon every 2 weeks, this doesn't seem sustainable.
I pulled a list of all current Needs Reply threads and did an analysis by subcommunity (HERE).
1) Subcommunities with the most Needs Reply threads
Here are the current top 10 subcommunities with the most Needs Reply threads. I've also included a projection for how many Needs Reply threads these subcommunities will generate per month.
| Forum | Count | Projected Threads/Month |
| AnxietySupport | 16 | 97 |
| DepressionSupport | 8 | 48 |
| RelationshipFriendshipSupport | 8 | 48 |
| 35OverCommunity | 7 | 42 |
| GeneralSupport | 6 | 36 |
| EatingDisorderSupport | 4 | 24 |
| NewbieHub | 4 | 24 |
| TraumaSupport | 4 | 24 |
| BipolarSchizophreniaPsychosisSupport | 3 | 18 |
| TeenOnlyZone | 3 | 18 |
Although it's only been 5 days since the queue was cleared, I have some reason to believe that this is pretty representative of long-term trends. I did an analogous report HERE just before the Answerathon and the results were pretty similar.
- 7 of the 10 subcommunities listed above were also part of the top 10 in that report.
- The top 4 are the same subcommunities just in a different order.
2) Evaluating how much support these subcommunities have
I was interested in seeing whether certain subcommunities might not have enough leaders and that's why they're having difficulty responding to posts.
- For each subcommunity, I came up with a count for the total # of forum team members by summing the #'s of CML's, CM's/TCS's, PA's, and FS's from the "Leaders" tab on each subcommunity's homepage.
- I divided the projected monthly Needs Reply threads by this number to get a rough measure ("Monthly Threads Per Forum Leader") of how much support each subcommunity is receiving relative to how active it is:
- High number = the subcommunity does not have enough forum leaders
- Low number = the subcommunity has enough forum leaders but they aren't doing enough
| Forum | Count | Projected Threads/Month | # of Forum Leaders | Monthly Threads Per Forum Leader |
| AnxietySupport | 16 | 97 | 10 | 9.7 |
| DepressionSupport | 8 | 48 | 18 | 2.7 |
| RelationshipFriendshipSupport | 8 | 48 | 5 | 9.7 |
| 35OverCommunity | 7 | 42 | 1 | 42.4 |
| GeneralSupport | 6 | 36 | 12 | 3.0 |
| EatingDisorderSupport | 4 | 24 | 4 | 6.1 |
| NewbieHub | 4 | 24 | 5 | 4.8 |
| TraumaSupport | 4 | 24 | 14 | 1.7 |
| BipolarSchizophreniaPsychosisSupport | 3 | 18 | 1 | 18.2 |
| TeenOnlyZone | 3 | 18 | 8 | 2.3 |
Some comments based on this:
- 35 & Over definitely needs more forum leaders
- Bipolar/Schizophrenia/Psychosis Support, Anxiety Support, Relationship & Friendship Support could also use more forum leaders
- Depression Support, General Support have enough leaders that Needs Reply posts shouldn't be piling up
35 & Over and Bipolar/Schizophrenia/Psychosis Support especially need more forum leaders because they can't safely rely on the Needs Reply Team to pick up the slack.
- 35 & Over should ideally only get support from users who are 35+. Only 6 people on the Needs Reply Team fall into this age group.
- Bipolar/Schizophrenia/Psychosis Support isn't within everyone's comfort zone. Only 6 people on the Needs Reply team have schizophrenia listed as a topic for which they accept 1-on-1 chats.
3) Suggestions for Needs Reply Team
There are currently 38 active users with the Needs Reply Team badge.
If every member of the Needs Reply Team were to increase their activity by just 3 extra forum replies per week, the Needs Reply queue issues would be completely resolved even if no changes were made to specific subcommunities.
My suggestion is to implement a "recommended" quota for the Needs Reply Team.
- By "recommended" quota, I mean simply letting the team know that it would be great if they're able to try their best to reply to X threads per 2 weeks, but if they aren't able to then that's completely fine and no pressure.
- It feels like it would be impractical to try to strictly enforce a quota for several reasons:
- There hasn't been any quota in the past
- Manually tracking the # of needs reply posts made is already pretty challenging and an approximation for a lot of people
- Programmatically track the quota (e.g. get # of forum posts created by user in current month where the post is the 2nd post added to the thread and thread was not created by the user) probably isn't going to happen
- To come up with the quota:
- Use the bi-weekly check-in form responses to come up with an estimate for how many threads per 2-week period the Needs Reply Team responds to
- Divide this by 38 (current # of active team members) to get the current average # of replies per team member per 2-week period
- Add 6 (how many replies we need to add per team member per 2 weeks to fill the gap), and then round to the nearest number ending in 0 or 5 to get the quota per 2 weeks
- If the number feels unreasonably high, like it might either create a major burden or scare people away, then lower the number to a point that feels comfortable and then actively recruit new Needs Reply Team members (i.e. make announcements) until there are enough people.
- Continue to monitor both the queue and the team's activity after that.
Tagging: @Tazzie @Mel @CheeryMango @bookworm274 @Listeningsarinn
Sorry, typo: 3rd bullet at the top should say ~450 threads/month instead of ~600 threads/month.
@QuietMagic
Hello! This is an excellent piece of research you have put together, thank you so much 
In terms of some of your questions/suggestions:
1. Needing more forum supporters in certain subcommunities
This is definitely something that we have noticed and we are coming up with initiatives to help! It isn't something we have yet discussed in detail but it is on our radar and we acknowledge that there are some sub-communities that could use a lot more help.
2. A "recommended" quota on the NR team
We already have a quota of 10 posts per month like every other FS role, it is just harder to enforce due to the tracking! On the NR team when there are people who are not regulalry contributing we get in contact with those people to discuss why, if there's anything we can do to help or if they would prefer to not be committed to the team but still help with NR posts.
3. Surge since answerathon
I feel that often there will be surges after an answerathon simply because we ask for quite a lot in a short amount of time! I think after a while, the increase of posts plateos but I have no hard evidence for that so I suppose we shall have to keep a look out for it!
Feel free to let me know if I missed anything out or misunderstood anything!
@bookworm274
Thank you for reading and responding. 💜 I think you've understood everything.
1) Subcommunities
I'm glad to hear that some thought is being given to increasing support for specific subcommunities. That feels like the root of the problem, since ideally each subcommunity would monitor its own team-specific "Needs Reply" queue and use its own resources to clear it every few days to avoid having posts sitting around without a response.
The timeliness of NR replies matters a lot. From what I've seen, most of the NR threads are created by new members who have just joined the site. And if they don't get a supportive response within a certain amount of time, then they assume nobody cares, give up on 7 Cups, and become inactive. (A common thing I saw during the Answerathon was members who created their account in July, last visited the site in July, had 1 forum post, and didn't reply/upvote after I responded to their post. I'd assume that a significant proportion of the Answerathon replies followed a similar pattern.) It makes a big difference whether an NR thread gets a response within a few days vs. a few weeks.
2) NR quota
Thanks for clarifying that the usual 10/month quota applies to the Needs Reply Team, and I'm glad to hear that there's monitoring and follow-up with team members who are having trouble meeting that.
3) Post-Answerathon surge
I agree it's possible that maybe the queue won't grow as quickly once some time has passed from the Answerathon. We can wait and see what things look like, but I'm skeptical that people taking a break after the Answerathon fully accounts for the NR queue, since if that were the case then the queue shouldn't have ever gotten up to 350 in the first place.
Based on the queue size of ~350 in late August and the fact that the queue was previously cleared in early July, it's possible that maybe the normal rate of growth for the NR queue is closer to ~200/month rather than ~450 month.
Assuming that 1) the monthly NR queue growth does end up being somewhere between 200 and 450, 2) that everybody on the NR team does the minimum quota of 10/month (since I don't know what the average monthly activity per NR team member is), and 3) that changing the NR team quota isn't an option if 10/month is a site-wide standard for FS... you'd need to recruit ~20-45 new NR team members to make the numbers work out.
***
If there's anything I can do that would be helpful as far as periodically tracking any numbers or reporting on anything, let me know.
@QuietMagic
I already check the general needs reply queue every so often. When looking at the application to be a forum supporter, it's a long and somewhat unnecessarily in depth application and on top of that, you have to fill in a form every couple of weeks for your work to be recognised (not sure how to find my previous responses either, something which isn't clear in the application), which takes a lot of time.
If the site was able to automatically keep track of first responses to forum threads in those with a 'Needs Reply' badge, that would be so much better. I'd be much more inclined to apply then, if it only asked for people to do one job and tracking was autonomous.
I still feel like weekly alerts to every single listener asking them to answer threads would be more beneficial. An announcement to highlight how busy this area of the forums gets every single day will help spur listeners on to help out, I'm sure.
@SilentSerenityy
Hi! Just in terms of needing to keep track of posts if on the NR team - you don't need to provide us links of the posts, we only ask for the number of posts you have done every two weeks (or more if you prefer) - the tracking form is simply putting your username and then putting a number!
We are trying to find ways for automatic calculation and we think we have found a way for the Answerathon but not sure if it will also work for NR team in general. I do like your idea of a weekly reminder to all listeners and I will raise that idea to the team if you are happy for me to?
Whether you are on the team or not we really appreciate you answering NR posts and I am sure all of the members you respond to also do!
@bookworm274
Yes, I'd appreciate you passing that idea on. Maybe the supporters in the listener rooms can share a link every so often to the needs reply queue as well to encourage listeners to help out.
@SilentSerenityy
Thanks for checking the NR queue. 💜
I agree it would be nice if NR response tracking were automated. I don't have high hopes that the tech team will implement, but I just submitted a help request ticket for it (#284943 "Automated Needs Reply Team quota tracking").
Most "Forum Supporter" roles currently have a quota that is automatically tracked and displayed on the listener's progress path page: https://i.imgur.com/aKe66sW.png
An exception to this is the Needs Reply Team. Currently, that team is tracking all of its posts manually, which is tedious/time-consuming, discourages people from joining the Needs Reply Team, and also makes it difficult to accurately track team activity.
My request is to implement automated quota tracking for users with the "Needs Reply Team" badge. The query logic for this would be to count the # of posts made in the current month by the user where 1) the post was the 2nd post in a thread (by date/time) and 2) the user is not the original creator of the thread.
@QuietMagic good point! Will forward this request to Tazzie, and we shall see what we can do! For reference: All forum supporters, whether they're on needs reply team or not, have a criteria of ten posts as well as Community Mentors. However the Needs Reply Team badge isn't tied to autoremoval. I think it probably shouldn't be hard and is instead pretty reasonable to make it be tied to the same quota FS and CM is!
and in the end the love you take, is equal to the love you make. - Mel, 7Cups Ambassador
This is an excellent analysis! @QuietMagic Thank you for your thoughts and ideas. I agree it's not sustainable to do Answerthon's every two weeks. Although it's a great event, it's hard to organize it and clearly threads up more quickly than we clear them, so there's surely some thinking and improving that we need to do there.
and in the end the love you take, is equal to the love you make. - Mel, 7Cups Ambassador
@Mel
Thanks very much for reading. 💜 And I'm relieved/encouraged to hear that there'll be some thinking about how to sustainably keep up on the queue.