Room update - Follow up
As many of you are aware, there are some changes coming regarding our rooms that were announced here. I know that many of you will have tons of questions and things you dont understand. I want you to know we are here to help with the transition and will be available to answer any questions you have.
So, what does this mean for our Support teams?
Nothing else changes! While some rooms may be open only for discussions, we want our team mods to open these rooms whenever they feel they can be there and look after it by keeping it safe and supportive. If you as a team would like to come up with ways to have your room open more often we would absolutely love that! The aim is not to have less time for support but to increase the quality of the support we can provide and ensure our members are safe when they enter our chatrooms. This is where we need your help. Open your rooms, and support your community in what we hope will be a much safer environment.
Support Team Leaders:
With this change we will be moving all support sessions back into your rooms. That means anyone on your team can lead any of your approved sessions in your room. We will still keep mix and match incase any room supporters would like to lead and dont have a mod or in case anyone wants to lead once off discussions for teams they cannot fully commit to. This is good news! Id like to thank you all for the hard work auditing and strengthening our content.
Mods and support team leaders:
Go out and do what you do! You are allowed to open the rooms you moderate any time you feel like and for as long as you can be there! We do ask that you put up a banner and reset it once it expires for the entire time you are there. This is so that we can track who is active and what rooms may need more help.
Community mods:
Community mods will be more safety focused. More info coming soon but we will see community mods be more focused on our 24/7 rooms and allow volunteers to do their thing in the topic based support rooms. They may from time to time open rooms who do not have as many mods and resources however their focus will be on keeping the 24/7 rooms safe and supportive and dealing with safety issues as they come up.
If you are a regular of a particular community and are interested in helping out, we would love to have you! Apply to be a room supporter here. After 2 weeks you can apply to be a moderator here and open the room whenever you are available!
I understand that this is a lot to process. I think that this is an opportunity for us to increase quality and provide a community space that is safe and one that members can rely on. I am excited to see the amazing work I know our volunteer leaders will do. If you have any questions please feel free to post below or reach out to me.
Is the mega member position totally not a thing any more? I keep being told that member roles are being discussed but no one is communicating with me as to what's going on. There is no mention of it here.
With being the trackroom focus and none of this being discussed (and I really could have helped with the badges within that announcement) I feel like the current admin team doesn't see my role as having a purpose.
@Lorraine234
My question was the first in this thread yet while others have answer mine does not.
@AffyAvo As i shared with you before and as you mentioned above, the member role structure is being reviewed and once it has been we will communicate that with you.
@Lorraine234 So it's totally ignored when such a massive change is rolled out?
@AffyAvo Not ignoring it, the member role structure is something we have been figuring out for a while and when we do have something to bring to you we will do that
@AffyAvo Hi Affy, I'm curious - what is the mega member position?
@fearlessWriter78 Here's one of the first posts about it - https://www.7cups.com/forum/CommunityProjectsEvents_184/MegaMembersLeadership_974/MegaMembersIntroducinganewroleformembers_47532/1/
@Lorraine234 what about room supporters? How are they supposed to fulfill monthly requirements now that rooms wont be open all the time?
@SoulfullyAButterfly
Additionally, how can we work ourselves up to the 25+ group chat requirement to apply for mod if these group support rooms won't be open consistently as they are now?
@kylerj78 There will still be 24/7 support rooms open. The others will just only be open when a moderator is in them. This will still be very possible.
@Lorraine234 Only having 1 room open (when will it open?) will also make it difficult for people to gain compassion hearts, badges, and thus move up the path on the site.
@fearlessWriter78 There are two rooms that are always open, regardless of when the Support Team rooms are open. This should not be affected.
@SoulfullyAButterfly room supporters are encouraged to join in when the room is open, attend discussions and be connected to the support team so they know when this will happen.
Im not sure how I feel for these changes but I'll just wait and see I guess. I myself Is a CCMod and i recently like to hold discussions so yeah. Just wait and see what happens. All the best though :)
@Lorraine234 What about the roles of keeping your badges are they staying the same ?
Global mods like me doing 3 Pop Up rooms every month ...
Will there be a community meeting for members and listeners to ask questions or is this set in stone and a done deal?
I am having so many so upset and already leaving the site ...
I do understand change I really do but we do need to make sure we know more in advance and be prepared and know what to tell everyone out in the rooms.. I have been a Mod for years and have seen this before and having only 2 rooms was bad and so many packed in and then you had Mod colliding with one another .. so now there will be group mdos , global mods and community mods.... how will this work with so many out in 2 rooms in the adult side ?
Is it still that the Group and Global Mods are over the rooms and the community mods step back or will that change also ?
I am sure there will be a full list of what to do and not do right ?
Thanks 
@Tyedyedbutterfly65 Everything else stays the same and nothing changes. The rooms will still be there. They are just only opened when you can moderate them. So they open, you mod for as long as you wish, and then they are closed until the next mod comes and does the same.
@Lorraine234
Wow this is really sudden. I wasn't expecting this. We already brought back the discussions in the Anxiety Support room last week, so..good thing we already did that , but it will definitely sadden me to to see the room close. I do believe that changes are for the best though, so I will try to see this change as a chance to improve the overall quality of the support the community offers.
I do have some questions about it though. Will all mods be able to open the room? What about the room supporters? If room supporters can't open the room, I can see some people giving up on the role or even not applying ..
@VickyP room supporters require moderators to be in the room just like any of the pop up rooms we had. This would be a great opportunity for support team leaders to involve them and keep in contact about when the room will be open so they can participate until they apply to be a moderator.
"As many of you are aware, there are some changes coming regarding our rooms that were announced here."
Hate to break it to you but the changes have already happened.
@fearlessWriter78 yes and some people are not in a good state not being able to say goodbye to friends or those who've helped them survive.
@caringPanda45 Yes, it's very concerning and seems like more of a burden will now be put on listeners to ttalk 1-on-1 to help people.
@fearlessWriter78 this site has always been terrible--TERRIBLE--at communication with the community. It's frankly insulting.
Disappointed but not surprised the trend is continuing (oh hey OP broke everything and then quit feels like I've read this post before...)
@Lorraine234 not all room Mods have the ability to open a room. I've checked and one of ours doesn't.
@caringPanda45 that is correct but we have community mods who are here 24/7 who can open it anytime for someone who is not a doorkeeper
@Lorraine234 I'm wondering if you can respond to some concerns I have.
First Laura leaves. Then the feed gets cut. Then most of the permanent chat rooms get cut. The CEO @GlenM first says it's for "safety," then admits it's due to low funding. He wasn't completely up front even in his day-of announcement. Why did the CEO not consult the community about issues that it might be able to help him with?
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to feel like something is up on the site here, meaning, there's more to the story that we're not being filled in on, except in vague terms.
Do you think the site will shut down? How much notice will we be given, if any?
In addition, regarding the community mods, like CommunityModGabe. Who are these community mods? Are they paid employees of 7cups? Are they our peers?
@fearlessWriter78 the announcement was misunderstood and then another post was made to clarify it here . We have had setbacks but we are secure financially and the room updates was for safety. The info shared about financial situation was not refering to the updates regarding the rooms but rather updates in general.
Community mods are paid contractors who work on safety iniatives. Most of which are people who have volunteered in the community for years. They are here to help and support our volunteer efforts.
7Cups is by no means shutting down. This has been share by some but is untrue. We are steady and hope to move forward and continue to grow and improve as we do.
@Lorraine234 Not sure we're reading the same thread. In his Update thread, he says,
"Some of you noticed the group room announcement. That is part of the scaling back. Not ideal I know, but we have limited resources at present so we have to be as smart as possible with what we do have. Everyone on the team is working hard to grow revenue so we can scale back up. We are pretty good at this, but things take time to unfold."
You're saying the chat changes have only been for safety, but that's not what he says there.
@fearlessWriter78 I found that rather confusing too, and it goes back to some of my comments about how things were put out in general in that thread.
My current interpretation is that they are shifting to trying to make things more safe. I do feel like the paid community mods have been very helpful for the group rooms. My guess is admin thinks so too, to the point where they would want to have a better mod:room ratio. They don't have the funds to hire more mods, so less 24/7 access, plus some of the rooms now have special badges that can be easily lost for those who are making the rooms unsafe.
Dropping the feed was a financial decision, so combine that with how close together these 2 things occurred and a confusing statement was put out.
I am making assumptions, not sure how much is right or not.
@fearlessWriter78 I was refering to this post here
@fearlessWriter78 This is known in political circles as a Kinsley gaffe in which the speaker unintentionally expresses the truth.
@melliotm
hopefully we will see more of that
@melliotm Yeah I was arguing with Lorraine (who has also now quit 7cups lol) about this - it's clear he said directly the decision was made due to low funding, but Lorraine just wasn't admitting that for some reason. It's like something's wrong here - either you have low funding or not!
move fast break things and quit love too 7cups dot com
I think I got banned from the group chatrooms. I was hoping to come back. I am terribly sorry. I need the group chat support so much. I promise to not ruin it again.
