Mega Members - Introducing a new role for members!
Over the past few months, we have been experimenting with member leadership activities or teams. Some examples of this have been members leading discussions, member forum friends & other group support badges which indicate leadership or excellence from a member.
These teams/ projects have been not been as successful as we would have hoped. Laura & I have been thinking a lot about our dedicated awesome members and how they fit into our ecosystem, project teams, or other structured teams/groups.
We have realized that members & listeners have different levels of ability to participate in the community. One way to think about this is: listeners are in giving mode & members are in receiving mode. Listeners are here to provide support & members are here to receive support. They have inherently different intentions for participating.
On the listener side of the house, we have done a great job engaging listeners to help with volunteer projects which advance our mission & increase support giving across the entire community. We have not done this as well on the member side of the house.
One thing we know for sure, we have some really awesome, dedicated members. Our listeners & the 7 Cups community experience have filled up these members gas tanks enough, so they are able to give back to the community in special ways. They reply to forum threads, they attend group discussions, they have listeners who they chat with regularly, they say hello to community managers, the post on the feed daily, they offer suggestions on how to improve the member community..etc. We have all encountered these awesome members & we love them.
This suggests that members need to receive a certain amount of support from the community in order to start giving back to the broader community.
You may be wondering, why dont these members just join the listener community?
The short is, they arent ready or they have & they prefer the member side of the house. Our hypothesis is: Members need to be proactively & regularly receiving support from the community in order to start giving back to the community in more dynamic ways.
Knowing this, we need to continue to experiment where long term member fit in into our ecosystem. In this vein, we are excited to launch the Mega Member badge. This badge will be awarded to members who have been selected by the community management team.
They are members who are regularly taking growth path steps, talking to listeners as members, but also contributing to the community in special ways.
What will a Mega Member do?
They will keep being awesome. We will not be giving them any formal tasks beyond asking them to intentionally maintain a 50/50 balance between receiving support & giving back to the community.
What will this look like?
Receiving support (50% of the time they are on 7 Cups): Chatting with listeners, attending group discussions..etc.
Giving back to the community (50% of the time they are on 7 Cups): Well ask them to pick one focus areas. It can be anything of their choice. Ex. Feed hashtags, a forum category or a specific forum thread they always reply to, co-leading a group support session with a listener or any other specific item they are interested in. It is up to them to select the area they want to focus on.
How will the Mega members be selected?
To start, since we are still experimenting, Mega Members will be selected by the community management team. We will pick up to 6 for this first group. They are selected based on:
✦ How long they have been members of 7 Cups community
✦ They already have an area of focus or a place in the community they like to give back to
✦ They are known by community management staff & entire community as being kind, trustworthy and loving
In the first 2-3 months, we will be experimenting with this first group. In time, we hope to learn how the mega members take this role on, what they like about it, what they dont like about..etc. With this data, we will improve the application process & encourage more members to join in.
You can nominate a Mega Member by posting to this thread. We will formalize this process soon!
annnnnnnnnnnd i also nominate Want2StayHappy, a really great guy, very kind and supportive to people all around and a great friend.
@originalscreenname I second that!
@essdee Third. @Want2StayHappy is a member who always walks the walk around here.
@BurkeDevlin
i fourth this @Wants2StayHappy should be it !
@BurningEmber
if I could spell @Want2stayHappy
@BurningEmber I think @Want2StayHappy and @essdee are each reaching a supermajority of pledged delegates. Might be time to print the T-shirts and corner the market.
@BurkeDevlin
You make the shirts, I'll clear a corner by wagging my firey tail. 
@neonEyes6723
You would make a good Mega member!
@AaronT5 haha thanks
@Heather
i am nominating @sam2410 cuz he is supportive and kind.
I nominate @Carrotcakefan to be a mega member. She is a wonderful, generous person who is always supportive of others.
I wish to nominate @Essdee she is so positive and a great asset to the 35 room.
I also want to nominate @rakas as he is friendly, supportive, positive and kind.
@Carrotcakefan
I just wanted to say thank you very much, Carrot, if I'd been aware of this I would have nominated your fine self. But you don't need to be mega to be amazing, thank you again.
@rakas You are so welcome. :)
I would like to nominate @essdee for the Mega-Member as they have been very supportive in the rooms, welcoming new members, have upheld the room in troublesome times, have worked as a unit to keep the room safe and have been very active in the forums and other site activities too. 
@Halogen Thank you for the nomination and for your support! 😊
I would like to nominate Figgy50. She has been a member of 7cups for 2 years and has always tried her best to make every new person in guest support feel welcome before it closed. She also loves to help new people find their way around the site. She tries to answer as many site questions as she can. She has also tried to be nice and supportive to everyone shes met on here. Thank you. And Yes. I did nominate myself.
@Figgy50
I nominate figgy50 as well
This is an excellent way to alienate members. For a site that's supposed to be focused on inclusion and understanding, having a popularity contest just reiterates separation and reinforces poor self-esteem.
@sentienne2
If you read the original post this is not about alienating anyone but highlighting members who contribute to the community. People get nominated by being noticed by other members and listeners by contributing to the community.
I do not see a problem with highlighting excellent members.As a listener you should know this is a nonjudgemental site and a program like this is only intended to help the community.
@NachoAverageListener Nope. Sorry I totally disagree with you. It looks like certain people get nominated and what about others who are just as good as them??? Why are they not nominated? Sentienne is exactly right.
@Figgy50
Members get nominated by people that they have supported and by other listeners and members who have witnessed them support others. The more outstanding a member is the more recognized they will be. Nothing wrong with saying "Hey this member is awesome and should be recongnized by others."
@NachoAverageListener
It's not about the original post - it's about how people are interpreting it.. all of the conversations in chats allude to what I mentioned above. Many are viewing this negatively. I just "verbalized" it for them.
@sentienne2
interpretationis in the eye of the beholder listeners get noticed for their ourstanding work, mods do as well, why not members.
@NachoAverageListener
My point has been missed entirely.
This has been a big point of discussion in the chat rooms tonight, and a problem for a lot of members.
In order to decrease confusion, would it be possible @Heather, to post the criteria for selection of the Mega Members?
To those that meet these criteria, congratulations on being nominated.
@sentienne2
I think the nominations started when this thread was posted Nominate a Mega Member
From that post: "Today, I want us to take some time to think of the member community. We have amazing members! A lot of them contribute daily to 7 cups and we want to recognize and honor their contributions. We can't be everywhere at once but we know you are all amazing individuals that love to give and share appreciation; so we are asking you all to nominate members that you think are ready for the Mega Member role!"
@NachoAverageListener
Right.. so what I suggested/requested above is a listing of what constitutes a "Mega Member". I think that would eliminate a lot of the confusion.
@sentienne2
From what I read in this thread they want people to nominate members based on this sentence.
"They are members who are regularly taking growth path steps, talking to listeners as members, but also contributing to the community in special ways."
And they will pick members bases on these criteria also found in this thread.
✦ How long they have been members of 7 Cups community
✦ They already have an area of focus or a place in the community they like to give back to
✦ They are known by community management staff & entire community as being kind, trustworthy and loving
It is not a popularity contest but if members have had bad interactions with staff example: bad mouthing moderators and other members in the chat rooms that might not be the "being kind, trustworthy and loving" they are looking for.
@NachoAverageListener
I think it's awesome so many people are nominating members. We should be congratulating the people who have been nominated and let the administration sort out the nominees to those who fit what they are looking for.
@sentienne2
i understand what you are trying to say sentienne, and i do agree with you, its more like, few members who also help are missing in the thread of nomination, cause not everyone knows the notification thingy, and few dont know about this nomination thingy, and few dont even know what a mega member is. and i know that few of the really good ones who's names were not mentioned, might feel bad, like "am i not that supportive?, was i not good with others?" and other questions might arise in their mind.
there are many members like figgy who were helpful/kind/supportive in the past, and they still are helpful/kind/supportive to others, she used to support many guests, but then after the guest support started to have new rules, and things got messed up, few of the guests left,few went into other rooms, and werent able to come into the locked rooms, and figgy might not have been in the same rooms with them, and like that they might have forgotten their name and other reasons, but figgy was there for them, and i know about it, cause i saw her helping others, and even they know that too. but they might have forgotten their(figgy) name cause well they are guests, and few people might still remember her and they know how she helped them. the new members might not know, or the new listeners might not know, about what she did, but the old members and listeners like me, know what she has done, and how she helped others.
conclusion: its just a badge afterall, there are many members who are better than mods too, but then again they cant be mods, this is just like that. and there are members who shift rooms, and help others, they dont stick to one room, members come and go, so they might not know how a particular member helped this room before they(new members) came. we know who is helping and who is not, few might get popular and few might not get popular, few might be well known, and few might not, and then the one who witnessed what they are/were doing, know their importance. there are many people out there, who helped a lot, and we dont even know who they are/were, few just go unnoticed, and few choose to be unnoticed, no matter what it is, the members like figgy, will still help others, even if they are noticed or not. its more like, we know celebrities and others who help people infront of everyone, and these people are noticed, and there are people like soldiers and others who protect us from other countries who are not noticed. at the end of the day, they both are helping in one way or the other way.
members who were nominated, all the best for you being a mega member, and the members who werent nominated, or you feel like you are left out, dont feel like that, you guys are awesome too, you know what you have done, and the other mebers know what you have done, you are just as special as them, its just the badge which is not there with you. so practically you are a mega member too. :)
im sorry if i made any mistakes in the paragraph, im bad at typing big paragraphs and stuff.