:)
We all can help anyone if we just try to
As a concept this remains very exciting, and it's good to know that work on it is progressing.
Using metrics to tune a system is really hard. One of the problems, I suspect (I'm no expert) is that a real-world system is often more complex than the metrics that people would like to use to describe it. So when you use the metrics to drive the system, you can push the system towards a dysfunctional state you never knew existed.
When you write about "the model by which we train other listeners" I wonder whether the model will be sufficiently complex to encompass the different kinds of work that listeners do.
In the same way, while the campfire is an attractive concept, I wonder whether everyone really wants a single big campfire, or any campfire.
You missed the third main option, which is for newcomers to lurk and see what's going on. That's what I do when I join a new Internet community or go to a big conference or festival—I wander around for a bit to get a feel for where I'll fit in and what other people are up to. Our current onboarding process makes that difficult.
What you describe as our chief metric isn't really a metric. We have no direct measure of human connection. I think I kind of hope that through this work one of 7 Cups' surprises will turn out to be some indirect measure that we can all trust.
@GlenM
@RarelyCharlie - great thoughts and I share your concerns about complexity. I actually think a real strength that we have is that we provide a lot of space for complexity and we try to respect and honor what emerges from that complexity. Metrics can't be the only or the fundamental driver. I think a lot of it is like parenting. Grades are a good indication, but you don't want to optimize for grades. Rather, you want your children to love learning and then, as a consequence or side effect, the good grades emerge. Lots of tuning and figuring out here for us! Appreciate the thoughts.
@GlenM I'm disappointed that since the research is 'opt-out' instead of "opt-in" that we had to go looking for this option in our settings. We should have been informed that this was occuring. It was further obscured as many of us are getting used to the new site navigation.
@AffyAvo Where is the opt out section? I looked on settings and cant see it?
@dancingRainbow45 I don't know what they have done on the listener side. For member profiles it's under the Public Profile options in our settings. It follows the options about closing our feeds and if we allow listeners to initiate chats with us.
"I want to improve mental health outcomes by donating my anonymized data "
@AffyAvo Thanks for that Affy. Cant see anything on listener page.