March 20 - New Flagging Profiles Tool
Hello Friends!
In our efforts to remove bad actors from the quickly, we are excited to announce another exciting feature! We've added a profile flagging tool. yay!
Many of you have asked for a tool like this for years! Get excited, it's finally here!!!
Here is what you need to know!
1) Every profile on the site now has a flag on it (see top right corner in screen grab below)
2) Listeners with the Verified Listener badge will have the ability to flag profiles. (so the flag icon will only appear for them). Access to this tool may change as we learn and evolve the tool.
3) When a profile is flagged, the following drop downs appear and must be selected -
4) If a LISTENER profile is flagged, it will go to the back end flagging page and be reviewed by our flag team for quality assurance. (Note - only flagged listener profiles will be sent to this page. More info on the flagged member profile protocol at the bottom of this thread)
If the profile picture, bio or username is graphic, sexual or racist, we will red flag it for removal from the site.
If a profile picture, bio or username vioates other community guidelines - it will be yellow flagged and an email will be sent to this individual alerting them that their profile needs to be updated.
We updated the Community Guidelines page to make sure bio, profile picture and username guidelines are easy to find.
5) To avoid misuse, a profile can only be flagged once.
What about flagged member profiles!?
The above process will be used for flagged listener profiles. We will be creating a separate queue for managing the flagged member profiles. This queue is not created yet, but will be this week. In the mean time, verified listeners can still flag member profiles. Please stay tuned for more information on how we will manage the flagged member profiles.
As always, these tools are a work in progress, we will continue to evolve the tool to get it right. Please share your feedback and ideas. We hope to work together.
@Laura
This is very exciting and a wonderful addition to the website. Thank you to everyone involved in creating and implementing this feature!
Good to know
@Laura
Excellent step. I think this will help a lot.
I have observed there is a fairly positive correlation between positive profiles/bio data and the quality of listening.
Also, members can be at the ruthless mercy of listeners with their own self-serving agendas for listening. Members may not be able to rate such listeners cause they know how to use the loop created by the blocking tool, to avoid being rated. I have had to be resilient, cause some listeners can be mean...and there seems there is little recourse for members. I wonder if there is any merit in the suggestion that members may benefit from improved options to report listeners?
@Maryleo, I agree that some Listeners are quick to take advantage of the blocking tool to avoid getting any bad reviews/ratings. These are the Listeners who know they are bad Listeners, and have no interest in improving. I'm sure they get away with doing a lot of damage constantly moving from one member to another without suffering any consequences.
That's really helpful,Thank you so much Laura, it will be able to help us in much better ways,I am really happy for this option.
@CoolBlueMoon2,@oxfordshiregatsby,@HotShot97,
@Laura
This is an essential update. Thank you.
Good to know a more secure and safeguarded system is being updated and improved upon@Laura
Thanks for this. Has been necessary, will be helpful @Laura 
@Laura
Thank you!
@Laura
Hi Laura x
On the listerners profile it tells us if they are male or female, could it be a consideration to also have their age so you can choose which age group you would want to talk to or even an age bracket say 20-30, 30-40, 40-50 etc?
Alao with the flagging of listeners, will admin first check that it's not just the members retaliating and that the flag was valid before the listener gets suspended, sometimes members can be abit nasty too maybe?
I think it's a good idea though xx
@Avaray - Yes, the policy is for the profiles to be checked prior to the warning (for minor things) or suspension (for major ones)
@Avaray please no. We are already leaking enough information. We are volunteers and not payed and the payed ones are protected. It's enough. This has to stop somewhere and I think we reached this point.
And you can filter already by age but not that fine grained.
@Avaray There is already an age filter, although it's not as specific as you posted. Options are teens, all adults and the adults can be further filtered by 18-35 and 35+
@Laura Heya Laura, we were chatting about this in our sc leader meetings 
just an idea:
perhaps we could have verified listeners trained to talk to people first about profiles ect being flagged; so everyone feels heard yet only verified listeners can actually flag so there isn't any misuse? 
@peacefulHug92 only verified listeners can flag.
@kindSoul10 yup, just thinking of longer term <3
