May 2020 Community Update!
Hello Community!
I hope you are all doing okay and managing the increase in stress weve all been experiencing. Things are starting to open up where I live, so people are beginning to venture out. People are a little worried and taking precautions and also seem hopeful that things will get better.
I was talking with some friends yesterday from NYC. We were talking about how they went through 9/11, Hurricane Sandy, and now COVID. They were saying how NYC is resilient. They get smarter and stronger through crises. It reminded me of when people go through a crisis. They often grow through the pain and learn important lessons. I believe that we collectively are growing through this worldwide crisis now. I believe we are learning to look out for one another and that we, too, will get stronger through this.
Weve all been hard at work across domains. I have some updates to share. The first major update is that weve recommenced work on our new app. This will be a react native app, which means itll be much more responsive and way less buggy than our current app. It wont be anywhere near as glitchy and will be much easier to use. Weve been hard at work on it for quite a while and just engaged a team to help us finish the last half of it up. They are estimating that well have it done in the next 3.5 months.
In digital health, they sometimes talk about apps like 7 Cups as a sort of digital medicine. You can think of listening, growth path exercises, shout outs in forums and group chat as different types of medicine that can help us better cope with challenges we face. Different challenges need different types and different doses of medicine. For example, if I struggle with panic attacks, then I need a lower dose of active listening and a higher dose of cognitive-behavioral therapy exercises and mindfulness activities. We give (listen) and receive care through the Website and through the app. The app being less than positive makes it more difficult for people to give and receive care. Needless to say, I am really glad that we will have a new app out in the next 3-4 months. A big thank you to you all for hanging in there!
Weve also been working closely with ambassadors to better understand how we can make quality improvements. One thing we thought through was the 80/20 rule. The basic idea is that 20% of something often has 80% of the impact. Here are a few examples:
20% of the people own 80% of the land
20% of books result in 80% of the sales
20% of the songs are played 80% of the time
This is sometimes referred to as a power law and a strange number of things follow this pattern. I suspect that quality does too. ie, 20% of the things we do to address quality will have 80% of the impact. The key thing is to figure out the 20%! Unfortunately, that part is harder than it looks. Nevertheless, we put our heads together and we focused on new listeners as being a good area to start. We are adding a new button (right under the conversation window) that says Need Help with this chat? that will lead people to the listener support room. We are also going to experiment with pinned messages and small ways to highlight the top 3 things that result in great listening. We will run several experiments here. Additionally, we also want to do listener phone verification as well where listeners will need to use their phone to complete sign up. This is a longer project and will take more time.
Another area of focus is on the new leadership training track and certification. We have a great listener track that you can find here. Listeners work through our practices and coursework to earn different levels of certifications (Active Listening 1, Active Listening 2 - all the way through 8). We are working on doing something similar for leadership development skills (or a certificate program in organizational leadership [Im still working on title/naming]). I plan to spend the next week really focused on this work and will share more soon. You can see a quick video here that @Hope asked me to create a couple of weeks ago. Broadly, the track will consist of personal development, professional development, advanced helping skills, principles of servant leadership, and how to build community.
We will likely use a group or cohort learning model where we work through one part of the program as a community together. Itll likely end up being similar to what we did with the Get Together learning marathon where we worked through one chapter at a time and there was a certificate awarded at the end. There will be certificates on a module basis and then an overall program certificate on organizational leadership at the end. Our goal is to help build leadership skills to help you, your career, and our community.
Another area of focus has been on accessibility. Many of you noticed the little blue man in the corner of the site. We have worked on a number of updates that make that blue man less and less necessary, but we are not all the way there yet. We hope to be in a place where we can make the blue man optional or a setting in the near future, but we have more work to do. Broadly, accessibility consists of making the site more user friendly to people with disabilities. For example, if Im blind then I might use a tool called a screen-reader. It reads off certain parts of the site to me. Before, our chat send button would have just been read, by a screen-reader, as button. Now it will be read as send. Weve made these updates on hundreds of buttons all around the site. We have more to do, but have made lots of progress.
Also, I wanted to say thank you to all of you for the recent encouragement and rallying! What we are collectively working to do together is very challenging. Patience, grace, encouragement - these attributes are like turbo-chargers that help propel our community forward. Thank you for being such an awesome group of people!
Glen
H
Heres the latest from our Translations Coordinator, @SoulfullyAButterfly!
With the Translations Project Revival, we have had lots of volunteer translators who have shown great dedication in helping globalize 7 Cups. We are currently standing at around 81,000 available translations for 44 available language projects! The good news is that we are mostly halfway done with the general project.
Our most recent bat-call from the community saw us getting an overwhelming amount of support and interest - if you are still waiting for your application to be processed, please do not worry as we are onboarding every single day - we appreciate you sharing our enthusiasm.
We are at our final touches for languages including Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Spanish, and Portuguese (Standard). If you would like to help out in polishing these projects before its finalization and launch, please PM @SoulfullyAButterfly - we are looking forward to completing these projects!
Our designated leaders (@Shirley7Cups representing both Chinese teams, @wonderousMoon5570 representing the Hindi team, and @bouncyVoice4149 representing the Spanish Team) have continued to support the Translation Project by helping support their respective teams and guide them towards accomplishing goals. We are very proud to announce that @KACOSMIC stepped up to be a designated leader for Portuguese (Standard) and have helped immensely boost the projects progress!
If you are interested in stepping up to be a designated leader for other language teams, please PM @SoulfullyAButterfly
As we continue bringing well-deserved acknowledgment for our Translators, we have recognized that celebrating every small effort matters too. We are awarding these awesome designated leaders with the Featured Leader badge for their exceptional dedication. Our Chinese Translation Teams have also made immense progress and we have the privilege of celebrating the dedication of @AddictedTeaLover98 (who has proofread over 3000 translations and @Violiness (who has helped proofread all of the project!).
It is the minute efforts that help build bigger celebrations! Apart from badging translators (allowing access to collaborative rooms and more), we have decided to recognize our proofreaders with the Translation Microscope badge - this will help facilitate our final proofreading marathons!
We look forward to continuing to enjoy globalizing 7 Cups whilst celebrating our teamwork. Keep an eye out for more celebrations and recognition, proofing parties, team meetings, and fun gatherings!
We are proud of all of our community - where there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved!
Laiba/Hope
I am proud of the accomplishments of the sub-community, forum, teen and Internship leadership Team. We have accomplished a lot in the past month and it is exciting to share the news with all of you.
The sub-community team continued its strong events celebration streak into May under the leadership of @Tazzie (our Sub-community ambassador).Various events were hosted to celebrate/raise awareness towards many important events. Mental Health awareness month was celebrated through a variety of thought provoking forum and group support discussions. Additionally the sub-communities hosted events for appreciation week, mothers day, National Fitness Month and many more. You can view the event master post here! Additionally, the sub-community leadership board was rearranged to reflect the current roles. Tazzie and team have started with the planning of 7 Cups upcoming birthday! Find more information here! Last but not least, Tazzie has started a series where the focus is on appreciating and acknowledging the work of our community.
In Forum news, @Lucy2 joined the forum team as a forum mentor leader. Our forum Needs Reply Team has been working hard under the leadership of lucy2 in ensuring that people posting in the forum feel heard. Additionally, @Anomalia & @Mel (Forum Ambassadors) along with the forum leadership team have been hard at work ensuring that all flagged posts are timely reviewed and appropriate action is taken to ensure a safe forum experience for everyone. Moreover, 14 forum supporters were onboarded to increase support in different forum areas. Lasty, @River (Forum Mentor Leader) has been focusing on checking in with the forum leaders and providing support to all the wonderful people involved in supporting the forums.
The teen community has seen a rise in engagement in group rooms especially in the teen listener room. A refresher post was made to highlight the correct purpose of the Teen Listener room. @Mel and team have been working with the teen community to improve their teen listener room experience and to provide more opportunities for growth as a listener. More time has been allotted to the timely review of safety reports and safety concerns to ensure that the teen rooms remain a positive space for all. All this is of course a work in progress, we will continue to work hard and provide more opportunities for the teens to take part in. Additionally, the first batch of teen sharing circle leaders and discussion leaders received their badges! Teens have stepped up to take the lead on sharing circles and discussions, we are very proud of their accomplishments! Moreover, Mel, Tazzie and team continue to focus on providing supportive and engaging opportunities for the teens. Lastly, two more Adult-Teen Listener interviewers were onboarded to ensure fast application processing for our adult-teen listener role.
Our Internship applications have almost doubled in the past few months. It is exciting to see such a rise in interest.Our Internship Leadership Team remains strong and continues to provide support to our Interns. 83 Interns completed their Internship trial and became active interns since the last community update. 12 interns successfully completed their Internship. We have added a final reminder email to ensure that all interns are aware of their internship end dates to further facilitate a good internship experience. The internship team is focusing on ensuring the best of support for all of our interns. Additionally, the internship sub-community continues to provide support to our interns along with a few fun activities to engage in.
Obs
In May, 3 Support Room Mentors (LavenderPeach, PamHarley003 & GentleFlameofCaring), 5 Chatroom mods, 4 doorkeepers, RS joined the Group Support Team. It is good to see how everyone is stepping up and joining hands to make Group Support Rooms a better place for everyone. Also, Support Room 24/7 and Community Room are linked to Newbie Hub subcommunity now.
From Listener Chat Rooms, PenguinPower31 stepped up as Chatroom Mentor Leader and will be leading the Listener Discussion Team. Also, I introduced the Listener Learning Session. It is a session I am hosting in the Listener Community Room to discuss some of the Listener topics.
Also, we updated the criteria to become Listener Chatroom Leaders as well as the criteria needed to keep the badge. This is to make sure our leaders are accountable and taking the role seriously, expecting them to stay in the chatrooms a bit more than before and our listeners team get all much needed support.
In Quality news, we updated the criteria to become a Quality Mentor. We updated it to make it more inclusive and consistent. It will allow better coverage for all Quality Projects. We also added detailed and clear guidelines on how to attempt Active Listening Tests 1-4. These tests are an opportunity for the listeners to test their skills and get feedback to improve it.
We also revived the QnA project. Q&A team approves and rejects hundreds of questions weekly submitted by members and guests on 7cups. When they submit a question, members of the QandA team approve, correct or reject them. They then go out to the community to get answered. These are real questions and helpful answers support someone in need.
I am proud of our community and thankful to our community leaders for all their dedication and commitment to support the community.
At last, I like to share a story in brief.
A father called his two school going sons and asked them to build a wall. Everyday, after school both kids used to put one brick after another well aligned. After a couple of months of work, they built a big wall. Their father was impressed and told his sons, Now never say you cannot be successful. Not able to create a big wall in a day isnt failure. It is the matter of one brick a day.
In other words, it is about moving from 0 to 1 and then 1 to 2. It is about taking small steps and after a while when you eventually look back and notice how far youve actually come. It is applicable for everyone - mental health recovery, getting in shape, taking the stairs of a building or solving the challenges of a community.
One step a day is the key! <-- great wisdom Obs!
Thank you @GlenM and @Hope!
Shout-out to all Community Mentor Leaders and sub-community leaders for all the support with hosting forum and group support discussions along with other important events! Your hard work is much appreciated.
@soulsings @RumpleSteeleSkin @Peaceloveandpaws @VickyP @Zaatarhoney @AddictedTeaLover98 @SamuelFrancis @lavenderpeach1107 @sundlower2480 @hopedreamlove @KimsonTheSteveFundYPOC @StanDaMan78 @WeedyGarden @amiablepeace77
Congratulations to @Mel @Lucy2 @Anomalia @ASilentObserver @SoulfullyAButterfly and respective team members for all you have accomplished together!
@Tazzie thank you for being such an encouraging, thoughtful, and gracious presence! We are all a little smarter and more insightful because you are here nudging us forward!
@Tazzie
Thank you, Tazzie ♡ it
@Tazzie thank you - we appreciate your great mentorship and support as well ❤️
Thank you @Tazzie, Its always fun working under your mentorship and support! Words cant express how much it helps and pleasure I have working with you 
Thank you @GlenM for the update! The phone verification does helps and it'll restrict some of the multiple accounts access. Hopefully to project goes well 
Thank you @Heather225 for tagging for the translation! I cant do it without the help of shirley and the team who is an awesome leader and hope for others to be able find help here too.
Tea 🍵 | Life is not a game of luck. If you wanna win, work hard. – Sora, NGNL
@AddictedTealover98 it's my pleasure
@GlenM
Listener phone verification sounds like a great idea!
@PhilosophicalLion1320 thank you! We've been wanting to do it for a long time; just a bit of a bigger project.
@GlenM I am looking for this update. When do you plan to do it?
@Shirley7Cups we don't have a firm date but I'll let you know as soon as I do!
@GlenM so there seems to be a shift from anonymous site to verification.
I'm wondering what's the reason behind this step. Could you explain what's the goal behind this step?
@kindSoul10 good question - this is pretty standard practice across most sites / apps now; this will not happen on the member or the seeking help side of the house. We will only roll this out on the listener side. Every so often there are people that sign up to be a listener that do not have positive intentions. We do a lot to flag these people and remove them. Phone verification is another proactive step that we can take to keep a person with bad intentions from creating multiple accounts.
@GlenM i understand the intentions. Thanks for explaining. What about members with not good intentions at all? Would it make sense to add phone verification too? If not, what's the difference?
@kindSoul10 @GlennM
that can sure make a huge diffrence in sancitityof this platform
@GlenM
I'm at my wits end with this and there are many people who will back me up because they've witnessed it in the rooms, and heard me go on about it as well. We need the phone verification to be happening on the member side as well especially when we are receiving messages from one person creating a million accounts a day to tell me horrible horrible things. Triggering things, disgusting mean cyberbullying things, explicitly explaining how they want to murder me. (yes I know anon site am safe whatever) that doesn't make it any easier to see or deal with. This person has the com mods needing to ban accounts, you're gonna say report them yeah, guess what 140+ times, It takes me away from actually listening to members on my listener account, destroys the atmosphere of the rooms. We suggested the phone verification to help solve this problem and instead you guys turn it around and decide to use that on listeners. How about the unsafe members who are harassing us as well. At least a listener has to verify to email address before being able to message anyone. At least there are some steps to keep members safe that way. All we keep getting from anyone is that "We are working on it" okay? What exactly are you doing to stop this behavior then? What steps are being taken? Instead, I am sent in circles with absolutely no answers. I email and get told the accounts have been removed. That's all fine and dandy but no one seems to understand that by the time we ban the first five accounts that start today, five more come in. I'm sorry but it seems to me that people are acting like an ostrich with there head in the sand pretending that everything is all okay and sweeping the problem under the rug. Guess what it isn't okay. I've had to close my Listener account for the time being due to the number of messages I get, not that anyone seems to care but whatever I guess. Am I suppose to just keep banning, keep getting upset, keep trying to hold it together with no matter how much this person seems to hate me, and want to destroy me? I can't even share any personal problems in the rooms without this person using it against me. I'm not good at pretending to be okay with things that are not that can make being around me very difficult. I prefer to deal with problems not hide and I'm pretty sure my time here will be coming to end very soon as it is far more stressful than a support site ever should have been.
-Penny.
@Mamabearmedic Seems like my time here might be coming to an end very soon, too, but for a different reason.
I use my phone to verify my identity to banks and government agencies. That's it. Whatever company 7 Cups decides to outsource its "verification" to doesn't get to use my phone to do it. So if this scheme goes ahead it looks like I'll have to go and be a listener somewhere else where they protect my identity better.
Here's another thought. Suppose you're a listener, or a genuine member needing support. You want to log in again and again to the same account. With phone verification you need access to the same phone all the time.
Now suppose you're a "troll". You make a new temporary account each time you're banned. You only need to verify that temporary account once, so the phone you use doesn't need to be your own. You can borrow anyone's phone to "verify" a temporary account, and borrow someone else's phone to "verify" your next temporary account.
This is a classic security blooper—making access more difficult for the people you want to let in, while barely causing any inconvenience to the people you want to keep out.
As I've said before elsewhere, there appear to be long-standing structural issues within 7 Cups preventing the kinds of problems you describe from being solved, while tinkering with labels on buttons gets treated like it's a priority. This often seems like it's denial and distraction.
There are solutions to the problems 7 Cups has with bad actors, but I'm convinced finding and implementing them would require a genuinely different mindset throughout 7 Cups—a systemic change, not just tinkering.
I've been cautiously optimistic that the concept of servant leadership might turn out to be the first sign of that different mindset, but I'm still unsure. When Get Together was adapted for 7 Cups it was significantly diluted, apparently in order to protect the status quo. There's a risk the same thing will happen to the leadership initiative, a risk that it will not lead to systemic change after all.
7 Cups needs people like you who prefer to deal with problems, not hide, but 7 Cups itself has problems it has been hiding from for so long that they've become really difficult to face.
Charlie
@RarelyCharlie phone numbers are cheap. Some are "for free".
7 cups seems to make a shift from anonymity to identification. It's security by obscurity. You won't know for sure who that person is, if they have malicious intents but it's going to weaken the safe space listeners and members need to be safe from bullying, stalking and fraud. By collecting more sensitive data 7cups will endanger it's own safety. It will become a valuable target for criminals.
@RarelyCharlie as much as i agree about our identity being safe. I am overwhelmed with hate messages and need them to figure out how to deal with this issue it has gone on long enough and I'm tired of being sshed. Tired of not doing what i signed up for. I signed up for listening not to deal with people telling me to go die. Its like a full time job only i do not get paid to handle them nor do I even have the badges to be handling them yet i am. Daily multiple times a day. There needs to be a solution for this. I wont be surprised if this is removed and I'm told to self care that is the answer to everythinf which is why i am saying that it feels like people want to just hide from problems instead of solve them. I can't pretend to be okay with things that are not.
@RarelyCharlie
I agree with everything you've said. My phone number is not something I readily give to anyone outside of business and familial relationships. I learned that lesson the hard way when I was stalked by a client at social services. A reverse number lookup can reveal my physical address and, for a very small fee, can also provide someone with nefarious intentions the names of my family members, sensitive personal information, and so much more. If the verification rolls out as planned, I too, will be leaving 7 Cups.
@PeaceLoveandPaws
I'm with you and the others above. I've also had an experience with someone on another anonymous site years back getting access to my personal phone number and using it to harass and stalk me to the point I had to delete social media, change my phone number, and move where I lived. I'm not comfortable at all giving up a phone number and risking my safety, as well as now the safety of my husband and kids and other loved ones in my life whose information could be comprimised by mine being leaked.
While I understand the intentions of the verification to try to prevent abusive people from creating multiple listener accounts to abuse and harass others on the site, I don't think it's fair to punish the masses for the crimes of the few. There are most certainly other ways to work on dealing with abusive listeners, putting more focus on the current reporting system and how reports are processed and investigated and such. Adding an extra step like our phone numbers potentially compromises anonymity and isn't even a great fix just as @kindSoul10 and @RarelyCharlie mentioned earlier. If this really does roll out, which I hope it don't, I also don't think I'll be able to stay here, which honestly feels terrible because I've given two years of my time to the place and feel I've been able to do a lot of good and contribute well to the community, as I'm sure every other listener here can also say in their own right. I'd hate for genuine listeners to be pushed to leave the site all because some bad apples fell into the batch and ruined the safe and anonymous aspect of the site.
@GlenM Thanks for the info and updates, and keep up the great job. Have a lovely weekend! :)
Cool, thanks for the update! I really look forward to the new and improved app!
@GlenM Thank you for the monthly update. It is nice to see how things develop and how decisions are being made among the community leadership! 
Thank you for the updates and for all that you are doing! Phone verification is a great thing, I agree with what was written above though, it is needed on the member side as well.
A little question: what about the feature that was supposed to replace the feeds?
@GlenM heyy if your bringing in a phone required to sign up new listeners what about those who dont own a phone they might have a landline might not have either
@GlenM
Sounds very interesting all the updates and I look forward to them coming up!
@GlenM
Hi Glen. Thank you for the update. Just wanted to point out that I only proofread the traditional Chinese part of the whole Chinese project rather than the entire project itself.
Thank you to @Shirley7Cups and @AddictedTealover98 (and others but I'm not sure what their tag names are) for helping me out during the proofreading process.
@Violiness it's my pleasure! (if you want to know all translators' username, you can click our dashboard and status to see them)
