Brainstorming - Guidelines

@AffyAvo

That's an interesting question. 😊 Personally, I don't feel like I have any major issues with the existing guidelines. (The main things that trigger me have been tech support and listener quality/training.)

There are a few things that I've thought about sometimes. Not as serious problems or things that I strongly feel should be implemented. But it's just fun sometimes to daydream and think about "Wouldn't it be interesting if..."

1) Eliminate the 1-on-1 chat censor and allow profane/other language in 1-on-1 chats

Pros:
-I believe most listeners/members who have been on the site for a while are already in the habit of deliberately bypassing the censor in 1-on-1 chats as needed and just view it as more of an annoyance/obstruction than a safety feature.
-Censoring members who are trying to express themselves just ends up invalidating or triggering them.
-Censoring 1-on-1 PM messages makes it more difficult for listeners to understand what a member is saying.
-Censoring sexual language makes it nearly impossible (and very risky if you want to avoid accidentally getting banned) to carry out chats with members who are genuinely seeking help with sexual issues.
-Some messages that are flagged by the censor are perfectly fine in the context of a broader conversation but when reviewed independently will look suspicious/problematic and can result in listeners/members being incorrectly punished.
-The censor flags any/all listener profanity as inappropriate without respecting the fact that it is sometimes a validating/empathetic thing to mirror a member's words/language or adopt the same informal/irreverent tone if the member is using a lot of profanity/vulgarity
-The censor makes it very difficult to chat in certain languages. For example, the Turkish word for "actually" is "aslinda". I'm not sure if the censor still does this, but at least at one point, Turkish chats used to constantly trigger the censor because this word contained the string "asl".
-Listeners can still have the freedom to define their own personal boundaries and ask members to avoid swearing if they aren't comfortable with it in 1-on-1 chats. (Some listeners already specify this in their profiles.)

Cons:
-The censor possibly helps catch genuinely inappropriate/dangerous behavior by listeners that otherwise can't be detected (since admins don't have the ability to review chat transcripts) or provide concrete/corroborating evidence for the existence of behaviors reported by members in reviews/blocks/reports/etc.

2) Allow chatting with members who are suicidal

Pros:
-I've had multiple members tell me that they refuse to contact crisis lines because they know that if they do, they are at risk of being involuntarily hospitalized against their will or having family/friends/abusers/employers find out about their mental health status--all of which would likely *increase* the chances of them wanting to do something drastic to escape a really painful situation
-I've had multiple members tell me that the support offered by crisis lines is either equal to or worse than what 7 Cups offers
-I've had at least one member tell me that a crisis line rejected them and referred them *back* to 7 Cups
-I've had many members tell me how painful it is to be rejected by listeners on the basis of the crisis policy and to feel like they aren't welcome on 7 Cups
-It isn't consistent with the values of 7 Cups to turn away its most vulnerable users
-One option for implementing could be to have a subset of listeners that are specially trained to handle suicidal chats and then funnel suicidal members toward them

Cons:
-The emergency dispatch services associated with crisis lines can and do save lives
-Chats with members in crisis have the potential to be highly traumatizing/dangerous for both members and listeners
-Chatting with suicidal members has the potential to place an excessively heavy moral burden on volunteer listeners (i.e. if they mess up, they might feel as though they're responsible for someone's death)
-Any existing deficiencies in listener quality would potentially become even more impactful/destructive
-Depending on the scope of implementation, it could potentially have far-reaching/unpredictable ripple effects on virtually every space on 7 Cups (e.g. 1-on-1 chat, forums, group chat, etc.)
-It would require making listener training more complicated, which I'm not sure if 7 Cups would be willing or able to implement

3) Allow off-site contact

Pros:
-Increased freedom for users to form consensual, real-world, long-term, meaningful connections that might be psychologically beneficial
-Most people who have been on the site for long enough are aware of how the censor works and how to bypass it, so the existing policy isn't really strongly enforced
-It gives people the option of integrating their 7 Cups self and their real-world self if they wish
-The current policy has the effect of keeping rule-abiding users trapped on 7 Cups if they want to preserve any friendships that they've made on this site.

Cons:
-It would possibly open up a huge can of worms with safety issues
-Having a culture of anonymity where 7 Cups is its own secluded/comfortable/vulnerable space that is separated from the real world and there is no pressure to merge the two together is really helpful in some ways
-Changing the rules would eliminate the best excuse that users currently have for declining off-site contact if they don't feel comfortable with it (i.e. "Sorry, I can't because it's against the rules")

@AffyAvo Fresh guidelines! That's a big project. So, just a few thoughts… Structurally, it seems to me that the guidelines page is really controlled by 7 Cups' developers, not by community leaders. So I'd start by making the guidelines a document that community leaders can change without the need for tech support. Then there needs to be a meta-rule, or Rule 0, which says:

0. These are the only rules. Posting additional rules, or alternative interpretations of these rules, in the forum or elsewhere, is not permitted. There needs to be something about special rules for particular subcommunities and rooms, but I'm not sure exactly how that might go. Then there needs to be a transparent process for rule changes, preferably involving the community in some formal way. There's an unused Senator badge that I feel could have a part to play. Some additional rules lying around in the forum might be worth incorporating, after discussion and clarification. For example, there's the rule about professional listeners keeping their profession a secret, which appears to conflict with the actual Rule 2: "Your bio should be professional…" Another structural problem is that listeners and members see different sets of rules. Rule 1 for listeners is Profile Picture Guidelines, but Rule 1 for members is (weirdly) Remain professional… And so forth. There needs to be one document with consistent numbering. Members need to know what guidelines listeners should be following, and vice versa. Consecutive rule numbers would be better than the current system. At present, "Rule 1" refers to many different rules. Censorship of chats and forum posts isn't mentioned in the guidelines, but should be. I think the censor has been implemented backwards. It should protect the reader (optionally, for those who feel they need protection), but currently it blocks the sender instead and the reader has no options. Fixing this is technically trivial. Perhaps the most obviously stupid rule, which could be fixed immediately if it didn't require tech support, is: 11 or 15. Never create second accounts on the site. The very next line contradicts it! Each human in the world is only allowed one listener and one member account. There are no exceptions. Rule 18/13 doesn't really make sense: 18. Be in a healthy state of mind. 13. Do not be suicidal, homicidal, or abusing anyone. If we really wanted to insist that everyone here is in a healthy state of mind we'd have to start by shutting down most of our subcommunities! However, I agree with Josh that it would be better to train listeners (or some listeners) to chat about the more difficult topics. Other organizations with volunteer listeners have been doing that for decades. They'd probably share their training materials. Offsite contact has always been allowed at 7 Cups, but the wording of the rule about sharing personal contact information causes widespread confusion. The wording needs to be fixed, although it will not be easy to get it right. However, I agree with Josh that encouraging offsite contact more actively would be a better idea, and very much in keeping with our mission.

Charlie