Coming Soon: Censor List Update!
Hi, everyone!
Thanks to ongoing research, we have been able to update the censor lists to be more robust and capture more graphic language and phrases.
If you would like to submit an item to be reviewed, you can submit your suggestions here!
Our goal is to continue to make 7 Cups a safe place for all users to interact! We realize that these changes might take some getting used to, and we thank you for your patience and support!
This is great!
@Heather225
That's great! I'm curious if adding the ways listners bypass the censor to the list of needed censors could help?
@Jenna
yes of course! Please submit any ideas!
I like the sound of "more robust" 
I'd describe the censor we have now as flaky.
I worry about "might take some getting used to" 
That sounds like the opposite of "more robust".
It's important to be aware, I think, that the type of censor we have now does not achieve the goal, "make 7 Cups a safe place for all users to interact". It's merely a robot programmed to shame and stigmatize humans. It doesn't protect anyone. It would be perfectly possible, technically, to reprogram the robot to protect humans. We have competitors out there who have been developing technology for that.
To clarify what I mean by "flaky" a listener (not me) was once censored for writing this message to a guest—can you work out why?
Well, I can assure you that you're not completely alone. I'm sure you have family and friends who love you very much!
The banned words are hidden here. Select this line to see the answer: love you very much
And here's another one. A listener said to a member:
I dont think youre worthless
The banned words are hidden here. Select this line to see the answer: re worthless
I am not revealing any details of these chats by posting here. The messages were censored and never made it into the chats. And then, after the messages were censored, 7 Cups published them on the open Internet where anyone can see them! That's how I found them
@RarelyCharlie
@RarelyCharlie
What do you mean by the "open internet"?
Oh, I just meant that the information is open to anyone to find without logging in to 7 Cups or anywhere else.
@SociableClementine81101
@RarelyCharlie
Really? How? (I didn't know this)
I don't really know how. I guess there's a fault in 7 Cups' website that allows it to happen, and then human error very occasionally causes it.
@IntrovertedDreamer73409
Fantastic development! Be happy to contribute when needed. I mentioned eating breakfast once in a chat, and the message got censored, saying it was inappropriate content. :')
That's difficult to make any sense of! As far as I can tell, talk of eating is only banned if it's pills you're eating. Capsules, tablets and all varieties of poison are fine, though
I think this would be censored:
For my vitamin D deficiency my doctor insists I should take a pill with breakfast every day.
But if you change "should" to "must" or "should always" it seems to be OK. Two or more pills are also OK. Someone must find single pills severely triggering!
Although this is fun, there's a serious side to it. 7 Cups was originally intended to provide people with emotional support, and instead we're rejecting people randomly depending on what words they choose. This has to stop, in my opinion.
@lovelyWhisper66
Just to add to this update -
suggestions/ideas from all of you! We have been collecting your feedback on the censor lists. This update reflects both additions and removals from the list based on your feeback
@Laura - Glad to hear we're looking at both sides! :) The censors can be a powerful tool to catch when something is going wrong, but there are definitely a lot of things slipping in that are not an issue at all and I imagine causing quite a bit of frustration!
@Heather225
I see lots of opportunities to add things to the censor, but honestly I would prefer to remove things. Half of the time when I'm censored I don't even know what I did wrong, like when I'm telling someone to "just jump" into the forums or that it "should take" me only a few minutes or of course, the ever famous why do you think "you are worthless" and you don't "deserve to be bullied"
@MonBon - You just caught almost my whole list of "WHY CAN'T I SAY THIS?!" censors :)
Hi Team - Thank you for sharing this feedback!
I want to remove the ones that are most annoying and not doing what they set out to do. Of course, we try to do this before the list goes live, but it's not always as intuitive as you'd think. So please add all feedback to the form. We will be collecting the suggestions and making an updated list to remove and/or add anything as needed.
Thank you for your patience as we navigate this change!!!
Oopsie no more swearing, I guess 🙃
-hides- 🙈
Not in English, maybe 
@sensitiveShade5337
I posted something about being "asleep" and my post got the blue censor wall. Does 7cups have something against being "asleep"??
@Figgy50 It's probably just an oversight Figgy. It was probably put in there for a phrase if someone said something that wasn't safe. But nothing ever works 100% in practice as it is in theory. They'll get it all sorted 
I had to look that one up 
Apparently "asl" means "age, sex, location" and it's used on chat sites where people go to meet people. Some of those sites have no user profiles where people can announce their age, sex and location, so "asl?" is often one of the first questions in a chat. At 7 Cups our profiles can include our age, sex and location. The abbreviation "asl" seems perfectly harmless to me. I don't know why we would ban it.
Banning those three letters when they are part of another word like "asleep" is just incompetence, in my opinion. Whether they will get it all sorted is very doubtful. There were mistakes in the old censor list that were never sorted, and the same mistakes remain in the new list.
@MrJacob
@RarelyCharlie @MrJacob
I figured it was good old A/S/L from the 90s AOL chat etc.. (Yes I'm THAT old) I was just double checking. :)
Unfortunatly it is really annoying when we're chatting about sleep issues and I get the big blue censor wall..
Oh, it originally came from AOL? Amazing! Yes, the version with slashes is banned, too.
Instead of "asleep" we'll have to say "sleeping". Until they ban "ping", that is 
Or maybe "dreaming" until they ban "ream". (I'm amazed they haven't.) And then there's "dead to the world" (I'm amazed again).
@Figgy50
@RarelyCharlie AOL was the first place I ever saw it but I think there were other (less popular) chatrooms before AOL.. but AOL was the most popular. :)
@Figgy50
I remember most commonly seeing it in the yahoo! chatrooms. To be fair though, I was only friends with family and family friends on AIM