Intervention for People that are Trolling

@seraphblade

I understand what you are saying, truly. There are definitely times it can feel like a story. That being said, the reason all chats are treated as genuine is because we don't know for sure. They may be talking about illegal or uncomfortable topics, but what's uncomfortable for one person may not be for another.

@seraphblade

"Please normalise the fact that it is OK TO CALL PEOPLE TROLLS IF THEY ARE, and it is also ok to block a member because of this."

Hmm. I find this troubling for a few reasons.

First, I believe that the act of trolling must not be permitted, under any circumstances. The behavior is horrid, counterproductive, insulting, and baiting in many cases. As a GroupMod, I acted SWIFTLY, did not mess around, no three strikes law, no verbal warnings, no soft language. I banned them from the site the moment they started in. I will not sit idle and passively allow someone to terrorize others on 7 Cups. However, my actions were admonished by the management of 7 Cups, who took a very passive approach to the rules, and believed that the troll should be permitted to "express themselves". That is why I'm no longer a GroupMod, since I do not subscribe to that mentality. I believe that it is a wrong approach, a do-nothing approach, gives the trolls much freedom to inflicting their harm unrestricted, causes 7 Cups to lose members and Listeners, and above all the trolls know the site rules -- in some cases, better than most on 7 Cups -- in that they know exactly what buttons they can push, how far they can go, and especially love to cry fowl when a moderator takes action as I had. Thus, the GroupMod is punished. This folks, is why we saw a huge exodus of GroupMods in the last year or two.

I refuse to label someone a troll. Focus on the BEHAVIOR, not the PERSON. Their behavior is the problem. Perhaps there are psychological reasoning behind their need to act that way, but blaming the person doesn't solve anything and only fans the flames brighter and stronger. The problem of trolling MUST focus on the BEHAVIOR of the individual, not assigning labels to people, which doesn't work nor solve the issue at hand.

@Sventek

I think I didn't express myself well enough, I don't advocate for calling people trolls as such, but when I brought up trolling behavior on the chat, or illegal behavior or someone perpetuating hate speech, members will actively tell me to empathise and that I have to try and listen to their problems.

Some mods refuse to acknowledge that some people will genuinely come on here for entertainment and like harassing listeners and we are expected to listen to their issues when they are obviously there to 'troll us'. I have actively been told to empathise with someone who 'hates people of color' for example.

@Sventek

What I meant was that mods don't accept the existence of trolling behavior and they tell people to help/empathise/engage or even refer the member to another listener if I am '''uncomfortable''' with the chat. They just deny the existence of trolling behavior on these chats even when it is blatantly obvious. The issue is not me being ''uncomfortable'' with the chat, the issue is the person talking about illegal behaviours which are serious crimes, hate speech or bringing up things that are told in a very explicit way and asking you explicit questions. When I bring up such things in listener group chats I am told to refer the member to another listener and this is NOT the solution! The solution you said which is a swift block is ABSOLUTELY correct and I completely agree! I meant that we should normalise that behaviour instead of being made to feel like a 'bad' listener.

All - thank you for the responses here and for sharing ideas. I connected with @rarelycharlie to hear their thoughts/ideas and they are consistent with solutions that both @hope and @asilentobserver have been thinking. We are refining these ideas and I'll have an update soon. Thanks again to you all and special thanks to @rarelycharlie for sending comprehesive and pragmatic ideas over.

@GlenM

Um - lowly member here. I understand the issue with trolls - all too well tbh. Members deal with them in the forums as well. I guess I have a question as to whom we're supposed to contact about things? Because I have to tell you - getting a hold of people higher up to handle things is allmost impossible. You can tag people and they never reply. You can PM them and they either reply days later or they don't reply at all. We've been waiting two weeks - tomorrow - for an answer on another thread. There's a thread in the trauma section that another member asked about something and to be able to get ahold of someone for an answer seems to be taking alot longer then it should. So - who do we go to? I mean - everyone gets that most of the work here is voluntary and that people have outside lives. But as a member it's disheartening to not have anyone to turn to for answers and support - maybe instead of just one person - maybe a team of people or Idk - just have people available - somewhere. Someone that actually answers with in a certain amount of time. Idk - maybe it's asking for alot - it just used to be easier when I first started here and it's only getting worse from what I see

@mytwistedsoul

Hi soul! I think it depends on who you are trying to reach. If it's in forums, you could reach out to the leader of that forum. If they don't respond within a few days, you could try other leaders of that section. If no one ever responds, you could try @Tazzie or @Anomalia. Theres also a forum flagging team that flag posts. Tazzie and ano, please add any info i may have forgotten.

@EvelyneRose

Just got the message today and it's taken care of. Thank you Evelyne!

@mytwistedsoul I agree with you.

The team of people idea seems like a good one, but when it was tried using the @7CupsCommunity account it seemed to run into problems. A team to ensure that every thread in the forum has a reply was also tried, yet when I looked just now I saw threads with no reply stretching back more than a year.

The general way to contact someone about something is to Submit a request (in the Help Center). I believe this should work in all circumstances, although there might be faster ways in some specific cases.

In the forum, the general way to get a reply to a thread is to tag someone who might be able to respond. In a subcommunity this would be any of the subcomminity's leaders, but particularly the forum supporters and the community mentor leaders.

If you post links to those two other threads you mentioned, I imagine there are people reading this who might reply to them

There are other things that might help in the future, but it's difficult to tell how much priority an issue like this has. For example, beside the "Flag this post as containing inappropriate content" button at the bottom of a post there could be an "Escalate this post - it really needs a reply" button, which would save you the trouble of finding out who to tag.

And when anyone posts a new thread asking a question they need an answer to, there could be a checkbox for "This is a question - someone please reply". Then all the threads that don't really need replies at all could be cleared out of the forum's Needs Reply views.

Charlie

@RarelyCharlie @EvelyneRose Thank you both for your help and input. I will tuck this information away in case of future issues

Ironically enough, shortly after posting the first time the one issue was resolved within minutes. The second issue isn't as pressing as the first so I'm willing to try the other leaders for that area. Behold the power of the grapevine- it apparently works faster then the regular channels

Thank you both

@RarelyCharlie The Mighty has something similar to that. What people post can be classified as either a question or a thought. I do like the idea of being able to flag a post that might really need a reply. I do see many posts that have questions but finding the answers often turns into adventure, leaving all involved feeling frustrated. I really hope they give your thoughts and ideas some consideration because you have many that would be really good for all involved here and would benefit 7Cups as well.

Thank you both for your time.

@mytwistedsoul The Mighty? I hadn't heard of it before.

Yes, they have Question, Thought and Story. But they have their problems too, because I saw a question, "Whats your least favorite symptom today?" which isn't really someone looking for an answer. It's what we would call a check-in.

I don't know what will happen with this idea at 7 Cups.

Charlie

@RarelyCharlie I liked the @7CupsCommunity tag, but I do think admin needs to be clear when it works. I tagged a few times in May, still no response. It would have helped to have known the account wasn't being used then, as then I could have attempted to contact someone else, when I assume that's the contact to use because it's what we were told, things really go ignored. It also creates the issue of people getting into the habit of making multiple ways of contacting people, which leaves admin more stuff to go through.

@GlenM

@AffyAvo

We're active again now! Our apologies for not being clear when this account is used and when it isn't.

@Havingfuninthesnow I think this is an important question.

If I may make a comment, just now I checked our Community Guidelines. The general guidelines for the whole of 7 Cups say:

…towards any gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, religion, racial or cultural background…imposing your view point on any of these items on another user is forbidden.

The chatroom guidelines say:

…let's keep religion and politics out of our support area.

And the forum guidelines say:

Inflammatory…posts are not allowed.

So, these are the guidelines. Of course it is sometimes difficult for people to follow such guidelines, and I can see that there are people who have made mistakes in this area when perhaps it would have been better for them to reflect more carefully about the kind of place they want 7 Cups to be in the longer term.

The established way to deal with any listener who behaves badly is the same as it has always been: screenshot the interaction and report the listener, quoting the relevant community guideline. If that doesn't work, it seems to me the action your therapist took is a reasonable next step.

Feel free to message me if there are aspects of this you'd prefer to discuss in private. I'm not trying to shut down discussion in the forum by saying that, by the way—it's an important discussion.

Charlie

@RarelyCharlie @GlenM @Heather225

If I knew where the forum page was that Heather made about blacks and "Black Lives Matter" I would provide that link and all the bad things that were said since Glen should have stopped that and deleted that and approached Heather being on the payroll as a 7cups employee and talked to all the Ambassadors to put them in their place regarding the forum guidelines. There were way to many people mostly listeners doing awful things on that forum posting. They should all be written up for going against the guidelines and saying that Whites and other races DO NOT MATTER. That was an intense forum posting.

@Havingfuninthesnow That thread is currently pinned to the top in H's Haven.

I didn't subscribe to it because it seemed obvious to me at the time what would happen. I haven't read it and I don't plan to. Your comments reassure me that I made the right decision.

It also seems obvious to me that discussing that thread here will not achieve anything useful.

Charlie

@GlenM

I fully believe that sometimes people troll for just that reason... Trolling.

It can be extremely discouraging and hurtful for that listener to experience when the trolls do win, and it does affect us directly. I think that something that should be encouraged more is taking screenshots and sending them to the community email when a chat goes haywire. It's extremely demotivating to see that our listener account has been banned or taken off the site because of a review or report that was false or it was by someone that was intentionally trying to hurt us.

That also begs the question - when do listeners know that they've done something wrong?

I've gotten lots of messages from members that say they've had an experience with an abusive or trolling listener, and they're too scared to say anything about it. It's important to let them know and encourage them to report those listeners. Most of those kinds of listeners aren't here to help people.

Lots of listeners on the site say that they're here to help others, but there's always going to be a few that aren't here to help people. While it sucks, we do our absolute best to prevent those people from being on the site with the Safety Patrol Team(s). But as much as we'd like, we aren't always going to catch them all.

Listeners need to understand that if they've gotten a report or a feedback email, it's not always because someone was trolling or purposefully trying to hurt their listening career. When I first became a listener I took those as if it was a personal attack and not a way to improve my listening skills. Now that I've been on the site for quite a while, I find that when those emails are sent out, it's scary and confusing to the listener, and the first thing they think of is that a troll reported them. Then it's anger towards the site and other listeners and members on the site that hasn't done anything wrong.

While it's INCREDIBLY important to talk about trolls and how to deal with them, I also fully believe that spreading more awareness of what those emails are for and why they were given (as well as providing more chances to improve) is more important than saying or assuming 'it was just a troll' (which I've seen quite often, unfortunately).

Trusting listeners is really important. Though I understand that sometimes there just isn't enough proof coming from either side. Giving listeners second chances when things happen is also really important. Listening more in-depth to the listener's side of the story is such a necessity in order to prevent incorrect or unreliable reports and feedback.