December 9: Read only Guest Support

I don't understand what's going on I don't have m9ney to subscribe I plan to though around April when I have a bunch of bills out of the way and have a place to live a use I'm homeless

Thanks for trying everyone, Laura, staff. 7cups wouldn't be here if no one was trying. I really appreciate your efforts and hope you continue exploring options.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, those who disagree with this idea. I appreciate that.

I appreciate the feedback, but a lot of the feedback is hurting me.

I was a guest once. There is a lot of generalizing about guests on this thread. That's hurtful. Are guests unwelcome to take part?

I was a guest once who had a great 1-on-1 chat. There is a lot of generalizing about staff on this thread (assumptions that staff hates guests) and I feel for the staff here. That's hurtful. Are listeners and staff unwelcome to take part?

I lurk in rooms. There is a lot of generalizing that lurking guests will judge one-sidedly. If you knew I was there and not listed in Participating List would you exclude me from your conversation like you want to exclude the guests? Would you assume I was judging you? That is hurtful. Are other members who used to be guests unwelcome to take part?

We are all essentially anonymous here.

Your fears are very personal and understandable, but they are also excluding a lot of people who socialize differently and learn differently and grow differently from how you grow.

There has to be some middle ground where everyone can feel comfortable. No place is a utopia.

I think a guests watching list is a great idea. I think a [name] [g] enters/leaves message is a great idea.

Steps are still steps. If they are steps backward as you fear, we can undo them in the future I'm sure.

There is always something to try to hope for, isn't there?

Try to be supportive and open-minded and empathetic of all other people: guests, new members, old members, listeners, staff. We are all here to try to help each other.

I've only recently become a "listener". Is it because I'm a newbie that all requests are from sex feens?? Cuz I sure as hell ain't no professor of mindless sex addicts. 😉 Word.

what's next 7 cups administrator team?? how much money do you make for each member that signs in? I mean, this is all about money right? Is not about helping people, is not about kindness, is about money.... Now that guests are not welcome here, you're going to get a lot of money from all the curious that will make the account just to find out that this site isn't what it says it is.... Great job Stigmatizing people, great job banning Trolls, I mean, Guests!, AWESOME!!!

I'm not thrilled with these changes, but I also understand why they were done.

When I joined, all of the rooms on the member side were accessible to everyone. We knew people could lurk, but it was also free for anyone to join in. There was no rule about the number of accounts one could have, or sharing information about other accounts. Sometimes a guest would come in and state which listener/member they were, they just didn't bother to sign in at that moment. Sometimes people like the anonymity.

I know there were changes before I joined too. At one point there were no chat rooms. There was a time when they were only opened for periods of time when a moderator was present.

Things weren't perfect, but overall things were more supportive than what I had seen in the guest support room before it closed. I don't know if the site went back to the same set up if things would go back to as they were though. As accounts got banned, people would get upset. There are more people who know about 7cups now than before.

Ideally, I would love to have multiple support rooms with multiple topics opened up for all. Unless there are better methods for removing people who are purposely causing trouble though, I don't know how that can happen. For a while we didn't have issues with people writing code to spam the rooms. That happens more often now with people needing a member account to post compared to before. I think it would be even worse if they were opened to everyone again.

@easyMap6458

Sorry, other than the cultural areas, only English is allowed in the forums.

@Laura

whats exciting in having a read-only feature for guests! its not going to help them or something, like is it exciting for us to see a homeless person looking at all the people eating food at a good restaurant? and then, after the homless person makes an effort and saves money just to go to that particular restaurant and then he finds that the food in that restaurant isnt that good, and the service of the restaurant isnt that good either, he gets dissapointed a lot.

but then again, why would the restaurant care about the homeless man? they are getting their money arent they :p

It's a sliding scale. Protection versus Freedom. In my honest opinion, I can't side with either platform, but I can at least further clarify them, though in some cases, there really isn't much else to say.

For listeners and moderators, I can see why the change would be considered a good thing. I'd been to the guest chatroom a few times. Sometimes it would get up to 20 people ACTIVELY participating, Turning into the chatroom equivalent of a tornado. And I'd seen a few people say extremely descriptive and unsettling things in their difficult emotions, even in the chat. Moderators try to fix the issue, but the chat is moving so fast it's likely hard to directly target anything. It gets out of hand, and then multiple moderators show up and suddenly the last hour of people's attempts to be heard is gone. Erased. Like it never happened. That didn't really happen so much in the other chatrooms I visited. Trying to filter it out, make the job of moderating easier? Reduce the possibility of situations being blown out of proportion by a listener trying to calmly tell someone to not say something? Yeah. It sounds pretty nice there,

But like has been mentioned, Guests being limited Does reduce the feeling of being welcomed. Easy? Anonymous? Free? Yeah, you can talk about that all you want, but the fact is, with the way the world is otherwise, It can very often lead to suspicion and wariness in the person who is met with "You need to sign up to do this action." Other sites doing this is EXACTLY the reason why it unnerves some people. And others will have trouble understanding why they would have to sign up. A members only filter tends to create the feeling of a barrier, no matter how easy that barrier is to cross, The feeling of a barrier is still there.

But as I said, this kind of thing is a sliding scale. the more freedom one allows, the more potential there is for the harm and detriment of others. But the more protection you enforce, the more you restrict that freedom and openness. I've been one of those people waiting long stretches of time for someone to pick up my request, Longing for some form of communication. My first visit here ended with me becoming a member and then a listener because I waited for a half-hour, close to an hour. Without any response. Ended up becoming a member because I'd finally decided I needed the help, I needed someone to talk to, And maybe if I was a member, I would get answered. (I literally thought that I wasn't getting an answer because I was a GUEST. Which is part of that barrier feeling I mentioned. Because that's how things usually go with other sites, don't expect what's advertised if you're not a member.) Another 20 minutes went by. So I decided I wanted to be a listener to help change that. The only thing that helped me that day was being able to join one of the chats while waiting.

Watching the chats without speaking is like watching a party from the hill above, alone. Watching the others get what they need, or have fun. It's lonely. It's not that way to everyone, But Bloody H if it isn't a decent amount of them, Especially regarding the people who come here. Most of them are that population that feels lonely and left out. But that chatroom I joined, Flat out glomped me and hugged me from just saying Hi. Now not everyone is comfortable with that kind of thing, obviously, but it's a different feeling, watching others do that kind of stuff, and having it happen to you. Especially in the shoes of someone who's a guest. Someone who isn't a member. And thereby wouldn't be considered a part of the community really, anywhere else.

So my point? This is a widerscale solution to fix a problem that is on a larger scale than the exceptions to the problem. It's not a perfect solution. A perfect solution doesn't exist. Well, One or two could exist, but they would be an absolute nightmare to code.
Overall, only statistics and data would be able to show how good of an implementation it is. This is a problem that simply cannot be fixed without being a double-edged sword.

The majority of the attempted solutions to problems here are in fact, double-edged swords In some way. Because the possibility always exists that someone will be negatively impacted by the solution. Leaders can only hope to make the choice with the least causalties. Though, it should be noted that care must be taken also, as balance can be lost easily, and if the balance is lost here, This place could result in being another big ambition that never truly came to exist in reality. Or fades before it reaches the goal it originally set out to be.
But that's a leadership concern, Of which I am not yet part of.

Yknow, because spamming users with popups every few messages or so wasn't enough of a shafting to give people who don't want to fork over personal details when they are at their lowest points

You can claim all you like that it's to reduce the ammount of "Trolls" but any of them with half a brain would just find a way to fake it and get on anyways. [Unconstructive criticism edited by SilentSerenityy]

I'd love for you guys to tell me different, but, that's just how it is. It isn't even the money at this point it's just about the user base *shrug*

Their is an old saying- "Do No Harm" With this new system BOTH the Guests and Members have Lost something. Guests can no longer actively participate in Chats. Members feel like any sense of privacy while discussing Sensitive issues, has been Lost. Reading these Posts- MANY people are unhappy