10/24/18: Guest Accounts Update
Hello Community!
Throughout the past year, we have taken measures to improve the safety of 7 Cups by requiring email verification for any member or listener to participate in the forums or in the group support rooms.
In an effort to continue to make 7 Cups as safe as possible, we would like to discuss the removal of guest accounts from the site. We have many guests using the site in hurtful and unsupportive ways and moving forward we would like everyone to verify their emails in order to participate in any area of 7 Cups.
We need to tighten this last piece of the puzzle up to ensure the safety of our listeners and members in 1-1 chats. The timeline for this update is TBA. But we wanted to share this update with you now to give you the chance to share feedback.
Thank you!
@Laura @jill7cups @Power @Heather225
@Kate ty for all you do all CMs and safety coordinators
Its a horrible idea. But given your organization is no loger in genuinely helping people but making money or having fame it makes a lot of sense..@Kate
I had made a suggestion years ago as a way people could remain anonymous when guest access become more restricted - allow members to have aliases.
The only way I would support removing 1-1 chats from guests if this is done.
When I joined the site guests could use the chatrooms and connect with listeners. Members could also have more than 1 account. I choose to share things about myself knowing these options existed. If I knew any way I sought support on this site was going to be connected to my member account, I would have choosen not to share particular things. I suspect this is true of others.
Not only was it what I choose to share, but 7cups has also encouraged people to give out information they may not have otherwise. Things like birthday celebrations and icebreakers? Many of the answers we give allow others to identify ourselves more easily.
Here are some relevant threads to this discussion:
Jan 2016, Guests losing the ability to chat in most of the support rooms, and only had access to a guest room - this is when I first proposed the idea to have an alias
Dec 2016, the guest chatrooms were closed, guests could only lurk
May 2018, Guests lost access to chatrooms completely, accounts were required for access
Dec 2016, I made a separate thread just to keep the idea of aliases in mind, plus I had put it into the suggestion box.
@AffyAvo Something to point out too, when more rules are put into place, the people who lose the most freedom are those who follow them. When you remove guest access, you are limiting the ability for those who are going to follow the rules to only connect with their 1 member account. There will still be those who break the rules and have multiple accounts where everything they say isn't all connected. Why not at least offer this same privledge to those who follow the guidelines - not have everything they have shared on 7cups all be connected to everyone else here; let them keep a higher level of anonimity via aliases.
The only downsides I can see to this:
1) It's work to implement
2) People can chat with others here, and have background information about them they may be unaware of. This was always true with guest accounts though, so I see this less of an issue with aliases, especially considering consequences go with the account regardless of the alias. So if tomorrow I get an alias name BlueSun and I choose to break rules and get a 24 hour mute as BlueSun, reverting back to my AffyAvo account doesn't remove that mute, it's still there.
@AffyAvo I like your alias idea.
I get where you're coming from but I can't say I like with the way you've decided to solve it :\ but we'll just see how it goes
@determinedSummer25
Hey Summer
It is really hard adapting to change right
It's scary, you may not really understand it or why, you may feel they not listening to you.....so so many things right? I am with you and I know many more. BUT I do love your attitude of admitting yes you understand but not totally with it....But having a sorta open mind and just gonna adjust to changes and see how things role. hugs to you
I would echo a lot of what is being said - I understand that trolling is an issue, but this feels to me like it removes support from a large number of peope without actually solving the problem. We have seen that people who are committed to trolling here are going to do it. They will create multiple member accounts with fake email addresses. This is what we see with the forum spam, and requiring email verification didn't solve that problem - there are still literally hundreds of spam posts in the forums per day - all from members, not guests.
If this is going to go forward, I urge you to review AffyAvo's suggestions above - yes it would be a tech build to do, but now that we have additional developers, it seems to me that something that allows our members to maintain anonymity and creates a feeling of safety for those coming here makes sense as a priority.
@Anomalia
On the sites I used to moderate we discovered that because of stopforumspam and honeypot the spammers were registering all over the place, before they posted anywhere.
So if you make it policy that people use their account within 24-36 hours, and delete accounts where that doesn't happen, you can wipe out most of the spam immediately.
@DavidEss - intriguing! tagging @Krinkthemellowunicorn
@DavidEss - ooh, i like this idea. running it up the flagpole....
@KrinkTheMellowUnicorn
What about an immediate change in that guest accounts can't leave a review?
@MistyMagic - please submit it as a suggestion!
@DavidEss
That's basically pressuring people to create accounts.... "Free *ANONYMOUS* and confidential text chat" will not hold.
@IntrovertedDreamer73409 he's referencing people who've made accounts, if they make an account and don't use it within x number of hours it will auto delete. This is to help deal with trolls who are actually making accounts, and is not in any way forcing someone to make an account
@uqhkenzi
Oh I misread it. My heartfelt apologies.
With that said, the auto delete rule can be easily bypassed using a "self care break"which could put the account on hold till it is used.... And please do not talk about removing self care breaks from the site.
Generally these spam accounts are created in masses through bots. To your point these people could by pass with a self care break, this could be combatted by using ReCaptcha technology to ensure it is a real human initiating the self car break. This wouldnt hinder the use of self care breaks for those who need it, and it would help minimize spam. @IntrovertedDreamer73409
@uqhkenzi
If that is the case, captchas could help.
(I'm not sure if that is the case)
One quick thing I want to say - We are 100% committed to keeping free emotional support forever!!! We will never create a paywall to use our service. Our site is free to use. That will not change.
This update is being discussed only for safety reasons. There are many listeners who have been harassed by guest accts. We need to take care of our own and keep our listeners as safe as possible, this is one way we will be doing this.
@Laura
yes 7cups trying great. but I want share a fact a newly guest never trolls listener. Basically those who know the site very well are mostly involved with this kind of nasty things. So if we able to filter them then it will helpful. otherwise no matter what ever you do they will come or continue with their action.
@debojyoti012 How do you suggest filtering them out though? If we do IP bans, that can affect a large portion of a school as an example.
@AffyAvo
we can use simple method. If a member get 3 warning then his/her account bloked and he/she loose the option of join again or guest account option in the login page or apps page.
@debojyoti012 How do you track them though and prevent them from joining?
Guests don't use login - that's why they are guests and not members.
@AffyAvo
I was talking about members. My point was members trolls basically but a new guest never trolled at first. once they habituated with environment then they start trolling
@debojyoti012 There are already consequences in place for member accounts. I don't know how you stop an individual who has say been muted on their member account from then coming on as a guest.
I dont have a lot of insight in recent listener issues involving guest accounts, but I am a member who has used them since before joining the website with an account of my own. What makes me doubtful about guest account removal is mainly the fact that after actively engaging with the website for a while (especially more public spaces such as chatrooms and forums), a member may eventually feel no more anonymous on their account than a listener would on theirs. There is a set of boundaries, limitations and social roles they naturally fulfill at some point, even when on the receptive end of the exchange (though if you spend some time in forums and chatrooms, youll know that even member roles arent completely one-sided). Putting yourself out there and branding it all with a chat topic can easily feel uncomfortable, and become a barrier to receiving support.
The barrier issue exists in a first-time user (and potential member/listener) perspective as well. I think this is something most of us are familiar with: browsing websites, coming across a platform that requires a membership, and instead picking one that covers our demands with less subjective effort and strings attached. This is different for people who come to a community simply to spite it because they have a strong motivation to do so - trolling is usually pretty goal-driven - with a member account, if needed. This is something that is going on all the time, and that I doubt will get solved in this way.
There is the moral principle of anonymity that I wont get into because its been mentioned already, and because I understand that it gets compromised as soon as it enables damage on another end. It is still a value to reflect on as a community, but in a purely practical, non-ideological sense, I could tolerate e-mail requirement for guests if that somehow preserved either one-off guest accounts, or one guest alias for every member (as mentioned above), provided they would be separate from member accounts.
Now something more listener-centric Im wondering about: in my understanding, a listener gets to decide whether they pick up a guests general request, meaning that they can freely make a judgment call whether or not they accept guest GRs at the time or at all. Would there be a way for them to enable/disable and filter out guest private requests, similarly to how members can enable/disable listeners initiating chats? It seems to me that this way, those wanting to use or engage with guest accounts in 1-on-1s could continue to do so, and others could avoid them fully.
Honestly having an anonymous account is awesome, especially if you only need to come on a couple times a month or whatever and don't want anyone knowing that you're here, on this site. Not having an anonymous account and talking to a lot of listeners means somebody might automatically assume they know you from last time, especially if you post to the forums heavily.
I get that listeners have been dealing with trolls now and things have been hurtful, and i understand the whole switching between accounts, but it would really suck for 7cups to get rid of the anonymous accounts that actually help people because of the trollers or those who are abusing the system. It would be nice if they could have a system where they would be able to block all the hurtful people, but i don't think that will ever happen.
As much as I believe this would improve the overall atmosphere of 7cups, there are some guests who want support quickly without the hassle of email verification, which I know might seem silly, but people can be very impatient and borderline wanting to giving up. They might just think, "you know what? Nevermind." That's my only problem with it (and I might be speaking from experience with friends who I've recommended this to).
Apart from that, I think it's a good idea . :)
I'm not sure if I'm in support of this. On one hand, it's great that we're looking out for the safety of our members and listeners here, which should be our number one priority. But on the other hand, this is going to take away some of that anonymous factor that draws people to the site in the first place. There is a lot of people who would say that if you have to provide any form of verification (and that includes email), it is not anonymous. Granted, this whole thing isn't anonymous since admins have access to IP addresses but that's besides the point.
If this is about reducing the amount of trolls that are on here, why haven't you guys tried permanent IP bans? Even if you remove the guest account feature, there won't be much of a difference as it's not that much harder to create multiple email addresses at once. You can even create one email address and add numerous aliases on it and it'll just bypass the feature in the first place. And besides, there are a lot of trolls on her with member accounts so it's not like it will make that much of a difference.
At this rate, I'm seeing this site become paid-service. That would then reshape the whole purpose of this service - free, anonymous text, and I'm afraid that we're just going to keep pushing people away who really need the help but don't want to give in. I mean, what better way to verify accounts than using a credit card, right?
I deal with quite a bit of genuine guest accounts here weekly where most of them won't sign up because they want to remain anonymous, but I guess if this is the way things have to go then we have no other choice but to go with it.