October 20: Noni For Adults Going Live!
Earlier this month, we released Noni to teens! You can read about it here. As many of you know, we have been hard at work developing Noni. Please take a look at Glens forum post about Noni and what you can expect from her here.
The teens provided a lot of feedback and ideas on how Noni could be improved. We have listened, made improvements where we can and we are getting ready to release Noni to adults. Thank you to all the teens who provided feedback! You are rock stars!
We will do a slow release ensure everything goes as planned and make sure that having Noni doesn't cause any strange adverse affect on other parts of the site. We will release her to 10% of adults, then 20%...etc. till everyone has her. We will begin this process TODAY. YAY!
It will be random who gets her first. Our plan is to get her to all of you as soon as possible!
When you get noni, please use the following form to leave feedback on your experience with her. She will be released to both listeners & members!
yay!
PS - stay in the loop. Subscribe to this site updates subcommunity to keep up to date with the latest changes and fixes around the community.
Using the app on my phone, I can't find Noni although I got the message that I should have access. I don't find her in my conversations, and now I can't even find the conversations. The design of this app is difficult to follow. I may try later on the desktop version and see if I can find Noni . This is frustrating, folks. What would have been nice is to have just put a link in the notification so I could click through and find Noni. Thanks for your hard work, but I can't find or use it.
@SelfRescuingPrincess No, the phone app won't show her in the conversations list. You have to log onto the actual web site to see Noni in the conversations list. You'll be able to access her, then.
@Opalin thanks!
I seem to be the only one who isn't getting anywhere with her. We can't go that far in a conversation without her forgetting what I said or not understanding. I know this program is still learning, but maybe I just don't work well with chat Bots...
@HydrangeaField
Neither do I, don't worry. Noni is improving I hope.
Not quite sure what to make of Noni's "acceptance" techniques. I hope it works for others. It doesn't quite work, with me. I'd like to see CBT added to her bag of techniques to offer and teach; I respond much better to CBT.
Hello,
I've been having issues with Noni since she first started relaunching the past couple of days. Today, when I logged in to my member account, Noni randomly started a conversation with me, and would not leave. I tried to "end conversation" and typed "end the conversation" but she would not stop. It's not that I don't like Noni, its just that I didn't need a listener at that point and it's annoying to see her notification in my convo list. I later realized there is a setting in my settings that you can turn off "allow listeners to initiate conversations". But there is no trash button or x to cancel out of or remove the conversation, with Noni. Only for other listeners...
I wonder why this is, and if it can be fixed. I may end up emailing Laura, or another admin.
If it can't be fixed, i'll just deal with t. But it is really annoying.
Wish me luck!
Anyone with the same problem can reply.
@pluckykitten589 What I just do is ignore her. She won't be mad or anything if you leave the conversation without properly ending it. It's just something to come back to whenever you feel like it.
I took the survey already but now have more feedback for Noni.... When someone mentions hospital/hopsital the response probably shouldn't be "oh cool" if Noni wants to seem empathetic. lol
I like Noni, shes great for a quick chat when Im busy doing something else and dont want to have to worry about keeping someone waiting for my responses. Its just a little annoying that she isnt available through the app. Im almost always on mobile, and itd be fantastic to be able to talk to her while Im at work or otherwise on the go.
I dislike Noni a lot. She's boring to me because she's just a bot and I know how those programs work and it bores and tires me. And I keep getting email notifications that I have a new message, only to find out when I log in it's just Noni with another lame bot phrase and not one of the people I like to write to and where I anticipate an answer.
@ITeleportBread Just in case you didn't know this, I want to pass this along. If you knew already, disregard this. :)
If you go to your user image on the top right and click the drop down menu, you'll see "My Settings." Click that and scroll down to the Email Preferences section. You can turn off email notifications for new messages. I hope that helped.
If you want to turn off new email notifications from just Noni, I'm not sure if that's a thing yet. Hopefully they implement that soon. Take care! :)
@Zeraphim While I see the merit in this, I don't want to miss messages from other people that I talk to regularly. I just want a way to stop getting constant emails from Noni, which I think would be a good addition to 'her' service
@CaseysTea I see your point. It would be inconvenient to miss updates from other users just to silence Noni. I hope they implement a feature to silence only her soon, as it seems you're not alone in having the desire to not interact with her or get notifications for her messages.
A way to disable or hide Noni would be a pleasant addition 
I want to disable noni. Please allow this.
Echoing two previous posts, please enable the option to disable Noni. It is incredibly inconvenient that Noni takes up real estate as the top 1-on-1 chat with no consideration if a user of this site is currently interested using that feature or not. And further more opening the chat periodically even when all the messages have been
I agree with you. I blocked Noni on my computer for the reasons you mention. For more information, see: Block Noni
Someone has suggested that Noni only persists for 30 days. If true, this would mean that every time you tell her to stop it only encourages her by resetting the 30-day period 
@lilmango
@RarelyCharlie
thank you for a valuable input. Unfortunately I
@RarelyCharlie - no her current "checkin" routine expires after 30 days regardless at the moment, I believe - though I can check that. Of course we plan to make her more responsive to feedback and preferences. Sorry to those she is annoying in the meantime!
@lilmango - I'm sorry that Noni is annoying hard to avoid for those who wish to do so now, and we are working on improvements to this. Also, Noni was very naughty and triggering emails to people even if they had turned off email alerts for new messages and we have fixed that already.
Our current plan (we are still doing the work) is to first enable anyone to tell Noni to "stop" (in various ways) so that she will no longer speak up without prompting - this may include a preference setting if that's helpful. Second we will enable, at least for experienced users, a preference that would "unpin" Noni from the top slot, having her appear in order of recency as any other real person would, and thus having her fall below your radar if you are in fact ignoring her.
This is taking some time to sort out and I do apologize for the inconvenience and annoyance in the meantime.
@KrinkTheMellowUnicorn
Thank you for your response Krink, Im glad that the UIX changes are in the way.
On the other hand we have the matter of privacy concerns that have also been raised on other thread. Information storage and AI are certainly technologically inseparable. Would there be a way to have this privacy concern conversation somewhere? I would assume among the people on the field the questions relate to, what data is used, how its been used, and have the ethical implications of risks and such taken into consideration.
Thank you for you understanding Krink.
@lilmango
Thank you for bringing up the topic on privacy and ethics. I have been wanting to ask someone about it but slipped of my mind.
@lilmango - hi, I somehow missed this comment originally.
Id be happy to elaborate on any privacy concerns regarding the bot or the machine learning that powers her free-chat mode.
@KrinkTheMellowUnicorn
Please comment on the privacy concerns. I see no reason to continue using this site if the admins are not willing to have a conversation about it. Its one thing to tweak UIX etc. its completely another to make data storage changes that affect privacy. Further to the point this is mental health peer support website, you are morally obligated to a lot higher standards with this than sites like Facebook. You have a chance here to not be shady like all the data hungry sites on the market. You have a chance to do this right and become a benchmark of openness on this topic. Walk through how responsibility and AI is actually build together with the community not behind their backs. Take that chance.
Are there privacy concerns specifically in relation to Noni?
@lilmango
@RarelyCharlie
AI by definition requires data in order to learn which isnt automatically a bad thing but does raise privacy concerns if the use and storage of data and AI itself is not discussed. Furthermore the security aspect that I have left not to mention earlier for the benefit of the doubt is becoming relevant. Security in this case would be about the ability to safely store the information and protect it. Noni is some version of AI. At least a hardcoded decision forest. Its not being discussed on technical level however which again is somewhat worrying since were on a mental health peer support site.
This all can be dealt with an open conversation about the topic. The issues have been raised by many users in many threads and are being ignored. That is what worries me. The conversation should be had before rolling out changes in how data is stored, for how long, and how it is used. This current situation is however more like Facebook approach which makes me uncomfortable to keep seeking support on the matters that make me voulnerable in terms of my social standing and career as well as how I can be potentially affected (manipulated) which naturally can be used for good or bad and is highly subjective. AI can be used for example for targeting specific tailored content to even smaller numbers of people (smaller segments) which is shown to happen already on platforms like Facebook. Who is to decide what messages are subjectively (not to mention objectively) good and to whose hands this ability can be placed. AI can be great but it also comes with risks that should be addressed. The change of storing data longer happens at the same time as Noni (potentially AI or AI in the making) just doesnt seem like an accident. And it is this link Id like to be discussed. Even if there would not be a link it needs to be then discussed. The silence seems to suggest that there is a link and they are not willing to talk about it.
im not looking to cause trouble. I would like to be part of the solution. But staying quiet about the privacy and increasing security issues is not a solution I am comfortable with on this, mental health peer support, site.
Ah yes, Noni's training data would be anonymized, I assume, but it would be good to have clarity about this.
I agree with you—staying quiet about these kinds of issues is an unhelpful approach.
@lilmango
@RarelyCharlie
yes, data anonymization is important tho only gets you so far when in social networks the focus often is on profiling which is naturally necessary if youre building something that supposedly helps people to tackle their challenges in life. But again that can be used in many ways and remaining silent about it is making it next to impossible to gain control as a member. People in general are voulnerable and even more so here.
True.
I think a discussion about the risks of profiling probably deserves its own thread—it is not just about Noni.
@lilmango
@RarelyCharlie
yes, I agree Charlie. An open and honest ongoing conversation about current situation, future plans, and progress. Privacy policy wont be enough to cover this topic. It comes down to managing risks as you say and also transparency within the company running and developing the AI and data set. Im not wishful for asking that from many platforms but here it seems necessary.
@lilmango in your settings, you have the option to activate or deactivated the collect of those anonymized datas. If you are concerned or dont want those datas being used from yuo, then you can to go in your settings and deactivate this option.
@TortueDesBois
that is a valuable functionality. Yet Id be more comfortable with an open conversation on how the data is used now and what are the plans in the future. Altogether further information on how now that the data of chats is saved for a longer while, how the information is used.
@KrinkTheMellowUnicorn I don't understand why 7 is being so stubborn about people wanting to disable Noni. I have read lots of posts where people just want to turn it off. It's annoying constantly having a 1 Message/1 Conversation notice. Personally I'll never waste my time talking to a bot. But if people want to then great. Just give us a disable button please.
@clab - I'm sorry you found it so frustrating. We have not meant to be stubborn but each change we make takes time and affects other things. We need to build and test, fix and fix, etc.
We have given people an opt out and fixed the bug that made it always say there was a new message.
Is Noni still a problem for you? If so, please let me know what else we can do to make her presence less unpleasant for you. Thanks!