Censor list update now Live - please share feedback
This update was originally announced here.
We know that these updates can sometimes work in unexpected ways in the product and how you all communicate. We are prepared to tweak and make changes swiftly to minimize any frustrations this update may cause.
@Laura thank you for this update! However, this may be irrelevant but the title used for the alert which is "Language Lists" could be misleading. (or maybe it's just me?). As someone who never seen the previous post about the censor system, I thought that you've literally made some updates regarding the language list found in the listener profile. That's all XD
@Erato
I did too!
@Erato
That's what I thought, too. I was thinking that maybe 7 Cups is compatible in more languages now. Perhaps it was a bad choice in title for the post
@Erato
I thought exactly the same, glad I checked though
@Laura
Are we allowed to see the list of words that are to be automatically censored so that we know what words to avoid? For me its obvious with most words but there are some that you just never know and those are the ones I would like to take out of my vocabulary on 7 Cups.
@kylerj78 @Laura
Hi Laura, I agree can we see a list since it seems there are more words on it that has been added since for a couple LTM that I talk to I feel that I am being censored a lot all of a sudden and have no idea why the words I am typing would be on the list.
@DanaMH @Laura
Not to mention, for me at least, it seems kind of unprofessional and a bit embarrasing if we as listeners get sensored in a chat with a member.
@kylerj78
the censor only applies in the chat room. You can type curse words in chat room without being censored. The words censored are cursed words or things like that.
@Laura so you got the way they would bypass some words in the new list?
@SouthernFlame @Laura
Flame, the words I am trying to type are good coping skills thou so it is embarrassing that I am trying to figure out what word 7cups doesn't like me typing in a 1:1. It also would be against the clock with this new response time if I was active so that would also be frustrating for that to go down for stupid things like this. (Yes, that is a DBT judgment word) and my therapist would be all over that word but if we aren't saying anything bad I just don't get it.
@DanaMH
May I ask what coping skill is censored?
@SouthernFlame
I talk about DBT and CBT things a lot and I don't remember the exact words I was saying but it was about the DBT Mindfulness Meditation on YouTube and I recommended the Anxiety one to start with since a lot of members have sleep issues and I mentioned to them that it really helps to relax and I almost fell asleep listening to it and it wouldn't let me send the information to several members. We also talk a lot about Mindfulness and good coping skills to use and how many times they can try it a day. I tried breaking it up some and using some other words but just thinking of some other words sometimes are hard to figure out that will make since to the member in the context to what we are trying to talk about. I have been seeing the sensor thing a lot in the last 2 weeks and using these same words in the past have not been censored. I use Alphabet of Stress Management and Coping Skills information a lot. http://rwjms.rutgers.edu/departments_institutes/cf_center/documents/Alphabet-of-Coping-Skills-Interventions.pdf
@DanaMH
I see. By any chance was it "fall asleep" I have getting censored too! I filled out the form on the first post.
@SouthernFlame @monbon @Laura
Another thing that happened a little while ago today I was trying to send a team person a url for a discussion that we are working on and it wouldn't even let me send it to them and there is nothing wrong in the url so not sure why I would be censored on that either.
@DanaMH
That is so frustrating. I hope they look into it... some things are just too much ><
@DanaMH Names have even been censored and sometimes gotta change up my messages when checking in with my team its not just coping methods
@CaringBrit
But I can't even copy a url for a discussion to give to someone to review. I don't dream up the url's Google does that.
@DanaMH try a shortner and give a shortner link instead
@CaringBrit
How do I do that?
@kylerj78
We are unable to share the list, unfortunately.
@Laura
May I ask, is there any particular reason why we are not able to see the list? Personally, it doesn't make too much sense to keep us listeners out of the loop on how we should speak in order to maintain professionalism. I'm just wondering
@Laura if the list cannot be shared then listeners need to be able to figure out the word combinations that are censored and share them with eachother so that we can learn what words we need to avoid saying so that we can carry on a normal conversation with members without knowing and educating eachother on the words to avoid were going to keep being censored and itll take listeners so long to respond to members we have to have some way of working together as listeners to figure out what words to avoid
@Laura
Don't avoid responsibility, laura. I get why you are unwilling to share the list, and agree, but saying that you are unable to is untrue.
@DavidEss there wouldnt be a need for a list and new word combinations continually added to the list if the censor didnt let the person know that what they said was picked up as suspicious it should just detect it and be investigated not let the person know so they know what sets off the censor and try different combinations until they find something that works its literally a training tool to teach people what the censor detects and how to bypass it telling them what works and what isnt detected so the fact that there is an ever growing list now of such common everyday words is the fault of the censor itself and its still happening and the list of everyday word combinations will continue to grow as those trying to say something will be made aware that something isnt allowed and rephraise it
@jennysunrise8 If our 1-1s are being investigated isn't that a problem when we are told our conversations are confidential?
@AffyAvo good point ! and whats being looked at now are just common innocent words and phraises (and words that include such letters as asl even though sharing age and sex and a general location isnt identifying at all and one can use the words how old are you and are you a male or female , exc) it leads to a lot of false positives being picked up so more conversations are being looked at that have nothing to do with sharing contact info
@jennysunrise8 What do you mean that conversations "are being looked at"?
@AffyAvo when a censored word is detected in this case asleep or any other censored word or phraise that triggers the censor the conversation is looked at in the chatbox by someone not just the comment that was trying to be sent to see the context of the message that triggered the censor if they were really talking about sleep or whatever the trigger was
@jennysunrise8
Where are you getting your information from? 1-on-1 chats are not looked at by anyone.
@incompl oh only the comment that im trying to send is looked at i thought the comment is looked at and some of the conversation also
@jennysunrise8 yes some of the convo is looked at.
@incompl
To clarify, their comment is not correct.
@jennysunrise8 What? I sometimes write entire paragraphs. Who else is seeing that besides the listener if it gets caught in the censor?
@AffyAvo @Power @Heather225 can you please elaborate on this? I thought our 1-1s were confidential.
@AffyAvo
Don't worry, chat are completely confidential. I am not sure where that information came from.
@EvelyneRose if that is the case why did a former listener of mine get told about a convo we had had which btw was not sharing personal info but a situation I was going thru.
@scarletLand3247
Confidential as in no one can see them except you and listeners are not supposed to share with others. As for your question, I couldnt tell you since I wasnt them, but Id guess someone broke confidentiality which is against policy. If that happens, please email community@7cups.com.
For what it's worth, my understanding is that chats are confidential.
When a message contains a banned phrase, the censor blocks the entire message, not just the banned phrase. The entire message is sent for evaluation, and one or more other people outside the chat see it. In very rare cases, human error has resulted in censored messages being published in listeners' profiles. Apart from those very rare errors, the evaluation takes place in a confidential way.
The censored message might reveal details of the chat. However, the censored message never becomes part of the chat, and therefore in a strict sense the chat itself remains confidential.
There has been a suggestion (in another thread) that maybe the people who evaluate censored messages might have access to the chats so that they can understand the context of the censored messages, which would help in evaluating them correctly. I think this seems unlikely, but I'm not 100% certain.
@AffyAvo
@RarelyCharlie I still see that problematic - if I think I'm telling one particular person something, it gets censored, so it goes to another person (people?) that I never planned to send those messages to so they can evaluate what I said and why it was censored.
I agree, it's problematic in a way that creating an exception for "asleep" doesn't address. But it's how 7 Cups was always designed to work. Censored chats were always intended to be a feature. Back then, no one thought through the implications for confidentiality and how it would feel to be a member of a community where a kind of secret police can monitor things.
@AffyAvo
@AffyAvo yea i wonder too every time a flagged comment goes out i kinda think about whos reading it and im sure each time a comment is flagged someone different reads it not always the same person even more reason why less comments should be setting off the censor needlessly a lot of my comments are long too sometimes although not personal usually but a member comment would be personal if i was a member i would definately have an issue with my comments getting flagged a lot just for saying normal things and unknown people reading the comments especially if it was very personal information just because they contain the word asleep and who knows what other silly word combination is setting it off thats very understandable! if comments are read by someone outside the chat it should only be if a phone number or address or email or something triggers it
if a person cannot speak about real issues a person is going through such as asking about sleep or asking about being " bullied at school " another word combination that apparently someone thinks is bad to say or talk about ( maybe it could be code for something! ) for some reason that just prevents people from being able to talk you dont want the censorship to be so extreme you cant carry on normal conversations about real issues people are going through
@jennysunrise8
That all is because of the recent censor changes though. They're working on fixing it.
@jennysunrise8
Just wanted to chime in so that we don't spread false information by accident that this is not actually true.
@jennysunrise8
Well, Jenny, that's because the current list isn't fit for purpose.
If a decent job can be made of it , it might be useful.
Afaik I've not been censored, but I rarely read my posts in a chat actually.
At the moment I think it is a total waste of time and money, it must have taken ages to code and wasn't put to much of a test, it wouldn't get a Verified Censor badge off me, but I am often wrong.
@DavidEss
This is playing with semantics though. She stated she can't share it because of whatever reason, she answered the question. An answer without a long explanation is still an answer. When people say they can't, it's a colloquialism usually. Usually there is a reason they can't do this or that, it's not that they literally cannot.
The list is already publicly available. However, sharing it more widely would expose how shoddy the whole thing is, and I don't think that would help to get us all where we want to be on this.
It seems to me it would help to have a clear commitment from 7 Cups to the community that the censor is understood to be broken and that it's going to be fixed so that it never again gets in the way of supporting members.
@Laura
@RarelyCharlie
Do we know when this might happen?
@Laura I just had a terrible issue in 1-1s with the censor as a member was having sharing what they had to say cause the censor and it was not some obvious thing.
The phrase "Just fall asleep" as well as just "fall asleep" is censored. I think 1-1s need less censors. I agree with censors for the rooms but leave the censors out of my PMs please. It's hard enough to listen.
@SouthernFlame
My suspicion is it's "asl" that is being censored. I'm noticing it too in things like "asleep" "aslong" and even discussing amaerican sign language (ASL)
@MonBon
Do you also think the word "sleep" is also recently added to the list since I was able to say that word in the past to folks?
@DanaMH
I'm not sure! I haven't tried just saying sleep in a chat yet
@MonBon
These censors are making chats hard 
Some phrases should not be censored but left to the discretion of the Listener and Member
@SouthernFlame
Actually it might be useful if the listener could turn off the member's censoring, and the member could turn off the listener's.
@DavidEss
That would be nice but I do think some of the censoring is to catching rules being broken of offsite content. It just needs to be less strict.
Yes, and "gaslighting" I suppose. Technically, there's a thing called a "word boundary" (denoted by \b in the code) that could have been used to avoid censoring groups of letters inside other words—preventing this kind of issue is definitely not rocket science. Maybe someone can whisper "word boundary" to the developers in the hope of triggering an "Aha!" moment.
This will not save American Sign Language, though
@MonBon
@RarelyCharlie
Asl should just not be in the censor list. It's nothing that we can't already give out.. age... gender... country.
@RarelyCharlie
At least American Sign Language can be reasonably worked around, but I would be hardpressed to consistently remember I can't use asl in any word, so I hope the dev team is able to implement the word boundary
I don't chat alot in 1-1, becuase I find it hard for me. There are a few exceptions. I had finally decided to share something difficult, took time to make sure the message made sense and was.clear. I got a pop up saying something like it seemed I was in crisis. I reread and saw nothing to indicate that. I changed a couple words and tried again, same message. It was a frustrating experience. My anxiety is now much higher after trying to figure out what I said wrong. I have not had this pop up before.
Finally getting the nerve to share and then being shutdown was not a good experience. How many other members experience this and don't say? I understand why the censor is there, but maybe at least let us know what we said wrong.
@practicalIdeal2007
I agree with that. If you're gonna sensor us, at least tell us what words are sensored and what we said in that moment that caused things like member experienced.
Practice, I am sorry that you had to deal with that. Seeking someone to talk to takes courage and I am sure that it wasn't pleasant being told you can't say what you needed to. I hope that you were able to speak with a Listener in regards to what you needed to talk about <3
@kylerj78
It is a listerner who I offline chat with, as live chat is harder for me. I don't know if it still makes sense after the editing. I will find out after they have a chance to get back to me. It does make me second guess whether I want to try to continue to explain if it doesn't make sense.
@kylerj78
If they shared the list, then it would be easy for people to know what words to avoid, so it doesn't make sense for them to share the list. We're just going to have to try to work around the censors best we can :)
@EvelyneRose it would be helpful for listeners to be able to have a thread where we can all share what word combinations trigger the censor so we can figure out what to avoid so we can have a normal conversation with members
@EvelyneRose the censor itself tells people what words to avoid i guess listeners can just learn from the censor what words to avoid instead of other listeners so everyone will learn eventually each person just write down the word combinations as they are told about them by the censor what words to avoid that makes sense that the censor has to be regularly updated and all the extra works it causes people who are checking what the censor picks up
@practicalIdeal2007
Sorry you had that experience since it seems like the last 2 weeks they have added a lot of words that where not on the list before making it really hard for members and listeners to chat about things that are not something that should be on the list.
@DanaMH
I think I figured out what the word was, as it happened again. Or at least one of the words, it may have been more than one. I submitted the word. Hopefully they can fix it.
@practicalIdeal2007
Hopefully the can fix it since nothing I have said should be being censored so this is really getting frustrating since a couple of us are having to communite via our 7cups email addresses what we want to say to each other as team leaders and gmail is slower than 1;1 messages.
@Laura another suggestion is to censor non-english word so it will make it much easier to have english only conversation in the chatrooms
Hi everyone! Just popping in to say thanks for adding all unneessarily censored words to the form! Please keep providing your feedback!
the alert says "New Languages.... and New Member Verification" where can I find this New Member update?
Oops sorry, the alert actually says "2 new updates: ....." but seems like I only could find 1 update. Anyone can point me the right direction?
@WMi - The title of the alert is very misleading. The member part of it, I believe, is the other post in this subforum about guest accounts.
Super Sorry everyone! I updated the alert title!!
Outta here . Censorship? You were supposed to help . All of you. ALL OF YOU.@Laura
Y@Laura you censor members? Wow. AND the rest of you think this ok? Hope you feel really good about yourselves. Because I dont feel good about 7cups right now. I am NOT a listener. If this was a ploy to get me to leave, you win. You all hated me that much. If it wasnt, YOU ALL will never know. I have nothing more to say. Except I think you want people to come heee [edited for moderation power] . Thanks. My anxiety is in the clouds. Thanks.
Okay - I am reviewing the feedback form and we will be updating the lists asap! We have already taken steps to remove "asleep" I think this was added to the list incorrectly, I AM SUPER SORRY FOR THE ANNOYANCE
@Laura
All words that have asl in it are it so thank you for trying to remove it!
@SouthernFlame how many decades has it been since people used asl? has that come back into style?
anyway, disappointed we can't say "53X" anymore. i totally said that every day, in every conversation :P
@bunnypants
It is so old lol
also @Laura the word KILL is caught in any word it would not let me say Skill
@SouthernFlame @Laura
Maybe that is why I can't type the word copinig Skills anymore. Since it tells me to call 911 or the crisis center. I talk about coping skills a lot with folks.
@DanaMH
prob >>
@bunnypants 1337 h4x0r5