Increasing Positive Connections and Decreasing Negative Connections

We have limitations to what we are doing here. 7 Cups is never going to be perfect. As you all know, 7 Cups is a process of trying things, failing, trying new things, figuring them out, and then making progress. Remarkably, this trial and error process has led us quite far. Im really proud of what weve accomplished. Weve supported millions of people and have undoubtedly made this world a better place.

Constructive and supportive feedback have helped us get to where we are now. We are very open to and thankful for constructive criticism. Weve written extensively about how helpful feedback can be an we also differentiated between process and content.

On that post I wrote:

To begin, when surfacing a problem and providing feedback – think about it in terms of the content and the process. The content is how you describe the problem or concern. Think of this as an objective description of the situation. The process is how you describe it or the tone you make. Think of this as the emotional piece of the description. Is it stated in a warm and helpful manner? Is it stated in a goading manner? Is it stated in an angry manner? (these are all process points).

As a society, we dont really pay attention to process very much. We dont really look at how relational dynamics unfold. If someone subtly insults you, it is kind of breaking the rules to say – ‘hey, that just hurt my feelings (this would be a process comment) Instead, the expected behavior is to just kind of accept it, feel hurt, and then maybe share it with someone else later.

As a result, we are often not very aware of the process that occurs in our relationships. This is even harder in an online venue.

However, as a community, we can make HUGE amounts of progress if we pay attention to our process when we collectively problem solve. It could actually end up being our secret weapon.

Here is one quick way to think about this:

1. Identify the problem or concern.
2. Write it out.
3. Ensure youre not framing any personal opinions as concrete facts, making blanket statements or catastrophizing.
4. Ask what are the emotions that Im evoking with this feedback?
5. Ask yourself – how would I feel if someone wrote this to me?
6. If you feel good about it, then post it. If you dont feel good about it, then revise it so that you would feel good about it.

Examples:

✕ The rain sucks. Everyone hates it and we are all going to get flooded.

✔ I dont like it when it rains. I am worried it might flood.

✕ Nobody ever listens to me and its pointless for any of us to say anything.

✔ I feel like people arent hearing what Im saying and I find that frustrating.

We are going to require people practice these respectful rules when posting moving forward. Think of our forum/community a little bit like a party. You might have 100 people at the party. If 1 person is being loud, negative, and insulting, then they can ruin the party for everybody else. That is what we want to avoid here.

Weve been getting reports that some posts are negatively impacting others. If we were in a real life group setting, then wed simply take the person aside, hear them, and problem solve with them. Because we are on the Web and not in real life we need a different model.

The first step is to ask everyone to follow the above process. If not, and a person posts an insulting, overly negative or harmful post, then well delete it and then email you directly to discuss.

I also wrote quite a bit about harmful people in Chapter 6 of the book. You can find it here.

How do you determine if you should let a person into your peer group?

People have their own weather systems. They bring their weather into your world. If your disposition is normally sunny and 70, yet every time Stacy comes around it become dark and rainy, then know the gray clouds have nothing to do with you. They are coming from Stacy. When you meet a new person, simply allow yourself to get a feel for their weather. If you like it, then let them into your network. If you dont like it, then dont let them in. Dont increase the size of that persons circle by spending more time with them.

We have also spelled out much of this in our community guidelines.

All of this leads us to where we are now. Recently, weve been hearing more ‘feedback that is really just meant to inflame things. These types of inflammatory processes use up valuable resources in ways that are not actually effective, because the people engaging in them do not really want to make 7 cups better.

On the member side, we started removing people who really were not there to get help, but instead just wanted to harass others. The environment immediately became much healthier. We are now transitioning this approach to the listener side. If you find yourself being gratuitously negative or inflammatory, we invite you to reflect on whether or not it is time for you to move on from 7 cups. 7 Cups welcomes anyone, but you have to want to be here. Ask yourself if the things you don't like about 7 Cups outweigh the benefits. If you don't like what you get here, it's harming yourself, and damaging to the community, for you to stay.

For our part, we will let you know if we believe you are being toxic. We will approach you after we have staff consensus that it would be better to have you move on. Well ask you to self-correct. If you cannot self-correct, and the behaviors become damaging to yourself and 7 Cups, then well ask you to leave the community.

Specifically, this process will look like this:

Alert you that one of your posts is not inline with these guidelines, delete it and ask you to reframe it in the appropriate way.

If you are unable, we will ask you to take a 2 week self-care break.

If this process repeats itself, we will ask you to step away from the community.

The vast majority - 99.9% of people - do not behave in this way. In fact, many people are actually quite happy with 7 Cups and we are delighted with 99.9% of you! Recent survey data is captured here and suggests 93% of listeners enjoy listening to members and 80% of members feel 7 Cups has helped them. The loud few would have you believe that things are much more negative. We are no longer in a position where we can continue to invest so heavily in so few. It is not good for them and it is not good for our community.

It is time for us to close this chapter. Lets turn to a new page, start a new chapter, and get back to fulfilling our mission.

Onward and upward!