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. :)
Rhino <3
I deleted my original reply because I did think this was a joke. However, knowing it is not, my question is why? Animals do not relate in any way to 7 Cups. I also don't see someone saying "You are a deer too?!?! Omg let's be friends!". This doesn't seem at all realistic. Moving on, some of these animals are just kind of out there. For example, I would be a rhino. I'm not sure how out of all the animals a rhino gets picked. I think a polling option should be done for the animals... especially if we cannot opt out. I do not want a rhino following me around the site ;) I also feel strongly that these badges should NOT show in the chatrooms. We have enough public badges. We do not need anymore. Overall, if the goal of this is to be more inclusive, then I feel we are going quite off track but each to their own (:
@Erica
If it's good enough for Disney, it's good enough for 7 Cups; I jest. It's more apt for the Teens section of the site, us grown ups should get fruit & veg!! lol
@rebel11
In that case, can I be a teen? haha. I want animals !!!!!! and yes, I realize that ...
Yes, everyone is allowed his/her opinion :) especially it seems on 7cups! ~ Platy
@cyanPlatypus6370
I remember being at school; the teacher put us in teams, ie 'Blue Team', Green Team' etc; she used the colours of the rainbow!! Strange but true!! She definitely wasn't creative enough, animals would have been way better!!
@rebel11 ... Yes, they did that here a lot too - especially in Gym class. Red vs Blue team, for example.
Animals are much more exciting!
@Erica
I agree. Should be able to opt out. Also what about those that have phobias of specific animals and don't want to feel inclined to avoid places on 7cups or the whole site not to accidentally view them?
@Erica
thank you for the feedback. We had to update the animal list -
Jan - Dolphin
Feb - Penguin
March - Horse
April - Camel
May - Elephant
June - Kangaroo
July - Star fish
August - Shark
Sept - Bunny
Oct - Eagle
Nov - Butterfly
Dec - Turtle
And yes, we will learn about how ppl use these to communicate and make connections.
@Laura thank god rhino was taken away. However, I still believe we need an opt out option as this doesnt show anyones connections in ones journey.
I've been thinking about this, and thinking honestly along the same lines as the lovely @erica. This is not only going to not achieve what you want but also just be irritating. As has been brought up already, there are issues with the fact that some months may have inappropriate animals- I myself would be a rhino- not an apt name for me considering bullies have called me this relating to my size. This honestly will just be a waste of time, and those who've been here as long as I have will never feel part of these groups, and won't want to be. I suggest inputting ideas we actually want (LIKE CLOSING TEEN HANGOUT) rather than coming up with irrelevant ones that will have no impact on the community other than having it shoved down our throats until any mention of animals makes us sick.
UPDATED ANIMAL ASSIGNMENTS -
Jan - Dolphin
Feb - Penguin
March - Horse
April - Camel
May - Elephant
June - Kangaroo
July - Star fish
August - Shark
Sept - Bunny
Oct - Eagle
Nov - Butterfly
Dec - Turtle
**we had to update the animals based on the icons. Some icons ended up not working out.
@Laura
I like being a starfish now
Can't say I'm extremely pleased about being a Star Fish 
but it's a positive addition to the site that I'm sure will be beneficial for some.
They're cute symbols, it's just a shame that parts of them seem to be cut off. They need to be repositioned a little better @Laura.
@Laura
Will this become something that we can opt out of? The chatrooms in particular seem to be a crowded place already, and adding animal badges into the mix only clutters more. I'd really like to see this removed from the room, since it shows on our profile cards and newbies are already identified with the Newbie badge. I like the idea of this, but I'm not on board with them showing in chatrooms the way they do currently. Ideally, I'd like to see this as an opt-out option, as well.
I can't really see how this can help to be honest.. It is cute and all that but I find it kind of irrelevant to 7cups. I think there are other issues that we should focus on rather than bringing new stuff that distract us..
