January 6 - Making our community more inclusive - Monthly Animal Cohort Idea
Hello Community,
In the new year, we want to continue our focus on helping people and building community. Yay!
Specifically, when people come to 7 Cups we want them to feel included and to be able to find a group or multiple groups where they feel like they belong and have an identity. We are doing this with our subcommunities now and you all have done an amazing job supporting, welcoming and creating encouraging environments for our members to grow and thrive in these spaces.
Today, we are excited to share, and get your feedback on, another idea that would encourage this same sense of community building across our entire community.
One thing you all have taught us is that Cupversaries are an important milestone to celebrate. We havent done a great job up supporting your efforts and making sure everyone who has hit a Cupversary milestone is honored for their dedication and participation. So to better support our Cupversary efforts and make sure everyone feels like they are part of our global community with a team of people who have also joined around the same time as them, we will be launching a new cohort program.
Every member or listener who joins our site will receive a cohort animal badge. And these badges arent your average badge, they are real animal icons!! Your animal icon will travel with you around the site. Those who join around the same time will all have the same badge so they can easily recognize each other and connect on their journey. Every month of the year is assigned an animal (ex. January is a Deer). Everyone who joins our community in January will be assigned the Deer badge icon. When you hover over the animal icon it will provide the month and date that you joined 7 Cups. So if you joined this month, the hover text would read: January 2018.
This will make it very easy to find others who joined around the same time as you and easy to figure out when a Cupversary is on the horizon! We can use these cohort groups as a way to build community. There are many creative ways we can build community around these animal cohort groups! To start, we will create a forum area dedicated to your animal cohort group.
Here are the tentative animal assignments - **UPDATED**
Jan - Dolphin
Feb - Penguin
March - Horse
April - Camel
May - Elephant
June - Kangaroo
July - Star fish
August - fish
Sept - Bunny
Oct - Eagle
Nov - Butterfly
Dec - Turtle
Wed like to hear your thoughts and ideas for how to make this work with the ultimate goal of making 7 Cups a more welcoming place, especially for new folks, and a place where it is easy to find friends and support each other.
Here are a few specific things wed love your thoughts on, too:
-----> Where would you like your animal icon to show on the site? Forums? Feed? Youe Profiles? Connect Cards? Chatrooms?
-----> We will be auto-assigning these icon badges moving forward, but would old school 7 Cups people like us to retroactively assign them as well?
-----> Other ideas for how cohorts can connect and support each other?
Thank you all! We are excited to see some adorable animals around the community!
Big thank you to @krinkthemellowunicorn for helping with the creation of this post. :)
@Laura I really like this idea. Any additional community building is never a bad thing. You brought up already the first question I had-- what about the retroactive members who've been around the block for awhile? I'd like to see everyone get an animal companion for sure.
Also, if there is a way for the icon to show up in all aspects of the site, I think that would be the most reasonable.
@ladylazarus1971
thank you for the feedback & comment! Once i know the update on how retroactive will work, i will let you know (and all know).
@Laura this is a great idea to have an inclusive approach.
To answer the questions-
1. I would like the badges to show everywhere of the site as different people focus on or feel comfortable in different areas. Everybody should have equal importance irrespective of where they spend time in the site.
2. I would like everyone to have the badges, who are new and have been in the site already.
3. Can we have an option to opt out the badge from showing as well? There are many people who don't feel comfortable with a lot of attention. For example, people wishing them cupversaries in rooms or PMs seeing the badge and they might not want to get a lot of wishes and prefer to keep it to themselves or their close people here. The opting out option in Settings page can help them feel comfortable i think.
@Laura
Thats a great idea. Anything that helps people feel welcome and part of something is awesome. I want one!!
@Laura It would be good if the icon appeared in the Bio, the Forums and the Feed. I think it would be great if these badges were assigned retroactively.
Okay - but why isn't there a turtle and why isn't it in December? *angry pout*
@ZizyTheTurtle the eagle is the closet thing to a bird but it's not in June </3
@JaydenIsHere We must rebel >:c
@JaydenIsHere Now you must learn to hop
@ZizyTheTurtle this hurts for me :p maybe I'll be forced to get a kangaroo theme haha
@ZizyTheTurtle ZIZY!! You got what you asked for ;) December is now a turtle!!!!!
@Erica My eyes are literally watering, tell me who I need to be thanking because I need to spam them holy moly tHIS IS A DREAM COME TRUE apokpwokdkoawdoawkpok
Some endangered species there, Elephants and Rhinos', I hope the people who join in those months get treated well on 7 Cups.
@rebel11
That wouldn't reflect anything on the person in those months though? There's literally no correlation.
@MythologicalMayhem
How people get treated on 7 Cups is 'hit or miss' (there is much evidence to back that up), my post was to highlight the plight of elephants and rhinos, not that 7 Cups would target the people who join in those months.
@Laura i love this idea would those who have been here years ge the month they joined ? along with how long ago etc date of joining as its my 3rd cupversary this year coming up id love it to be next to my name like the verefied listener badge so on my profile or in the badges is good or even chatrooms under everyones names
p.s wish the motnh i joined was a horse but i did come back in march xd
@Laura
Wow! I like this idea too and I like this animal icon to show on the Profiles and Chatrooms. 
@Laura
OMG I GET A MONKEY ON MY MEMBER AND A FOX ON MY LISTENER!!!!!!!! YAS YAS YAASSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!
@Llamonade
Monkey squad!
@Emily619
@Llamonade
hahah
