AMA Moderation (Teen) Questions Asked!

After completing this schedule ask me anything session here there were many great questions asked! I will be sharing the questions asked here, and will be answering them for those who did not attend the session, but wanted to.

#1 What is a mod? - A mod is a moderator. They are listeners who have been trained and are meant to help keep the group support rooms a safe and supportive place. This may be done by engaging in supportive conversation with community members, and by actively keeping the rooms safe by enforcing chatroom rules when necessary.

#2 I have experienced situations when I needed a crisis line but none was available. How can mods respond to crisis situations and whether we feel someone is in need of help? And also i am asking whether mods have the ability to remove certain people and messages from group discussions and circles. If someone in a group support room is using language which shows they are feeling actively or passively suicidal or thinking (Near Future Only) or planning to hurt themselves, they will be asked to take some time out to have chance to contact crisis lines. We at 7 cups cannot provide support to people in these situations as we are not trained to do so. If they refuse to take some time out, and continue using crisis language, we will take necessary actions respectfully! And yes, we can delete messages, and remove people from the room for a period of time if needed.

#3 - Is there a plan for mods to be able to better deal with said issues? Yes, we are working on certain things which will help mods identify a situation which they are unsure how to react to, and then will help them with the answer on what to do in that certain situation. Hopefully this will help. And we are always thinking of new ideas to help support mods improving and growing!

#4 So sometimes there are conflicts in the room and there is no mod to be found until after the situation is settled. And it's hard when no one can stop conflicts and it's annoying that admins are the only ones that can ban a member. I literally filed a report a while ago and nothing was done about the situation 😀 - Of course we cannot be in a room all the time, but there are community mods who have assigned shifts to be in group support rooms, they do have a lot of work however. So some conflicts may go unseen by any mod and that can be understandably very frustrating. In this case it would be best to use emergency form found in chatroom rules to request mods to that room, or to PM the community mod on duty, or to PM a known mod, who may be online to help out! And there are reasons why only admins can ban members. All Reports are handled carefully by admins and most likely all of them are handled properly.

#5 Do you think there are enough mods? And how do you think you can get more? I counted about 90 mods which is less than 0.019% of the listeners who have signed up and that is across both the listener and member side. Are you going to look into having volunteer mods trying to sign up to cover the community room as the community mods aren't super humans

We are always working on recruiting new mods, asking them to sign up for shifts to be in the rooms is quite difficult, it has been tried before by myself, but didn't go so well as many mods are not wanting to commit to a schedule as a volunteer mod. So this would be hard to do, community mods are amazing, but yes they aren't super humans and would appreciate some help. Volunteer mods do try to be in rooms as much as they can (: Please apply here if you meet the requirements! You can also find more information there!

Thank you all!