Over the past three days I have noticed the user created rooms where Mods are being outright rude to members who are struggling. One member was actually banned for needing support, and while I was in the user created room today I asked again and again not to talk about sex and take that to the Adult Chat and the mods were rude to me and purposely triggered me over and over.

I wish there was an option where only actual mods can mod a room.

There is no "log chat" option, so I can't log the chat times where people have been rude to others, but if that's what I need to do to, then I will.

I also wish there was a "clear chat" option so if things come up that I don't want to see I can clear the chat box of it.

I miss the old chat so much.

If you hover near the the scroll bar inbetween chat and the panel that has the people in the room a little box should pop up. The bottom option lets you clear the chat.

[MoxieDoxie]

There is a designated chat room for emotional support. Member created rooms are there to have fun, be silly and try and forget our issues for just a while. Unless of course they name the room and topic specifically for support otherwise it is fair game. Sometimes we get some giggles mentioning some sexual words. The topic of sex can be a comic relief we need. It all depends on the air of the room. Sometimes it can be a place for emotional support but that is not gauranteed and that is why there is a special room for that.

I pop in and out of rooms, reading the "air", and if it is triggering I leave instead of bringing everyone down. Sometimes they are in a giving mood and tolerate my emotional issues. I do not get pissy at everyone when I do not get what I need. I move on.

My triggers are my own and I own them and if they are discussing triggering things I leave.

[DocJohn]

To be clear, member-created rooms are for whatever topic the member who created it wants to chat about. If a member creates a room to have fun or talk about sex, you should respect that and only enter it if those topics are of interest to you.

We have a set of Psych Central default rooms you should stick to if you don't like the topic of whatever member-created room you're in. Or create your own room.

Members who create their own chat room "own" that room, and so have kick powers to remove members who are behaving badly. If you find another member is abusing these privileges, please PM me to discuss further. They are not "mods" (moderators) -- they simply have some very basic administrative privileges, for their own room only.

Sorry for the confusion.

DocJohn

Originally Posted by DocJohn

To be clear, member-created rooms are for whatever topic the member who created it wants to chat about. If a member creates a room to have fun or talk about sex, you should respect that and only enter it if those topics are of interest to you.

I think that's my biggest issue right here,
This particular room I was in doesn't have sex as the main topic. It just comes up randomly during the chat. The chat's topic is supposed to be general weekday/end things.

It just upsets me as sex was never in the title, or in the description box of the chat. If it were, I would have avoided the room. It also bothers me that the members I talked to were clearly, very, very disrespectful to me. When I asked nicely at first to limit the sex talk at least until I was gone (I wasn't going to be in that chat room for long) they started purposely saying things to upset me, which, I consider to be some form of bullying to get me out of the room, instead of asking me nicely to leave or asking if they could just continue their conversation.

[DocJohn]

Chat can be fast-moving and the topics may indeed wander from the room's topic.

Again, the room owner can direct or re-direct the conversation as she or he pleases; it's up to them to decide whether something is okay for the room or not. I don't think there's an easy way to change a room's "topic" after it's been made; a whole new room would have to be created. So part of this is a technical issue as well (we'll look into whether this can be changed more easily).

Room owners should *not* randomly kick members or abuse their kick privileges for their room in any manner whatsoever. If we receive a report of a room owner doing this, we will investigate and the room owner may have their chat privileges suspended.

And just a reminder, the community guidelines still apply in chat. We do not host "anything goes" environments here.

Best,
DocJohn

[Phreak]

It's possible to change the room name, description, and entry message after a room is created, however new users wouldn't see the changes, unless they were on the main full screen room selection page, as apposed to the small side panel.

Can we have a set of chat rules?

Like when people enter chat there is a list of guidelines they have to follow?
I think when people go into chat they forget the rules and ignore them. That was the point I was trying to make. One member kept talking graphically about porn and sex while another was flaming other members and calling them offensive names like "*****".
I know that behavior would never fly on the forums and it bothers me that it happens in chat.

Also, the room creator isn't always in chat, that's why they promote regular users to the 'moderator' status so they room can be moderated while they are away.

[ifst5]

I don't think you can expect other members simply to follow your rules for fear of upsetting you - we all have our own needs, and i don't understand why sex is considered more taboo than other topics. People have abuse issues in regards to a lot of things, sex is but one of them. If we're going to limit talk about sex we might as well limit all talk.

You're entitled to leave a room if you don't want to be there, you can put certain members on block, you can hold private chats on a different screen and you can also create your own room. I don't see how it can be more fair than that.

[Healing the Damage]

I agree with Kori. I think that a lot of people are given the "moderator status" in user-created rooms who should not be given that status. I think that a lot of really new members to PsychCentral in general are being given that "mod status", and they are more interested in discussing sex (masturbation was the topic tonight for a while), rather than in offering support. It's easy to say "go to Emotional Support for support", however, how long do you expect someone to sit in a room by themselves before they give up?

I joined PsychCentral because I thought it was a peer support site, not a "talk about sex all day" site.

I have tried to create my own rooms to be able to avoid the topic of sex, and from my experience, I wind up sitting there by myself for hours on end, because no one bothers to come in when they see that there is only one person there. It's a case of "majority rules" whether it is a helpful and supportive environment or not.

I am not sure though, about the "only mods who are actual mods having mod status" though, because I've seen people who are "actual" mods (like, listed on the site as a moderator) who abuse that power in chat.

When I first joined, chat was more supportive. Over the past few months though, it seems to have devolved into a sex chat rather than a support chat. As Kori said, members are banned for struggling rather than offered support. Members are insulted, mocked, and ridiculed. Members are accused of "lying" and "faking" their mental illnesses, or else accused of being "attention seekers" for asking for support.

I agree that this needs to change, because chat has become a very unwelcoming place. I have even had a couple of people who I consider friends from here tell me that they are thinking of leaving PsychCentral completely because of the treatment they have received in chat lately. And that is a huge problem, I think. Feel free to disagree, as I'm sure that some people will.

Edit: I have personally been told that I am just being paranoid and psychotic for thinking that someone in chat did/does not like me, however, I find it hard to NOT think that when they say things specifically to me (by name) that are very derogatory, rude, mean, and insulting. I am not sure how this particular attitude with things can be considered "supportive" at all.

[ifst5]

Originally Posted by Living in Chaos

I joined PsychCentral because I thought it was a peer support site, not a "talk about sex all day" site.

To suggest chat is constantly about sex all day everyday is totally and utterly false, and as damaging as if it were true. I've been here over 3 years and have never even seen chat become so disgustingly rude that hoardes have people have fled in outrage.

I honesty don't see the problem here, if members are sensitive to certain topics they can block members within a room to stop seeing what they are writing - you can still stay in the room without being exposed to what is so disagreeable. They can also create a private chat with other members which is on a totally different screen and there's also the option to dip into another room whilst remaining in the first one so you can go back to the original room when it's considered safe.

I wonder if this is more about members being banned for complaining about a user created room - in that case I would recommend either staying away from rooms created by that user or messaging them to to try and resolve things accordingly.

I'm not for censoring people - one of the reasons they come here is to be able to talk about what they want in safety. Yesterday there was a brief discussion about murder which could easily have been offensive to many people but I don't see anyone complaining about that. Or that there are members whose sole purpose in chat is to decry clinically effective medicine in the place of herbal remedies, or others who regularly talk about other forms of abuse which could in theory trigger many. Why are those ok but sex talk isn't? It seems to me we can't pick and choose what is disagreeable about chat to suit our own arguments.

Doc John ,
There was a girl who suffered from separation anxiety disorder, she had a panic attack instead of offering her support members blamed her called her possessive, told her she would loose her boyfriend which in turn made her very sick (she puked ) . She doesn't come on chat anymore but one thing I know is chat has changed alot. Support should be the primary concern and everything else secondary.

Kind Regards,
Fanora Hunsford.

[DocJohn]

Talking in generalities helps no one. Chat is not all one thing, all day long, in every room. That's why there's a variety of rooms our members can choose from. If you choose to be in a member-created room, you're also taking responsibility for your own self-care. If you don't want that responsibility, don't enter a member-created room expecting emotional self-help 100 percent of the time.

If you see *anyone* engaging in behavior that you believe is an abuse of their room powers while in chat, a quick PM to me is all that it takes for me to look into it further.

The only report I've received in the past month had to do with someone who didn't act on something that the member thought they should've acted upon. So that was an example of someone not using their room powers (when the member thought they should have).

Finally, to say "chat has changed a lot" since so and so a time is just speaking the plain truth. Chat -- and the community in general -- is an ever-changing thing. It is not static. It grows, expands, and changes constantly. While we may wish it to stay as "it once was," there's no way to make that happen, since the community isn't like a government -- it is a collective made up of an ever-changing roster of new members coming in (150+/day!), and old members leaving.

I would no more want the community to stay the same as it was 11 years ago as I would want myself to be the same person I was 11 years ago.

If you want chat to be more supportive, be that member who offers emotional support in the emotional support chat room.

If you want chat to be more supportive, and see harmful behavior taking place, send someone on the community support team a report. We can't act on things we do not know.

Thanks for your help.

DocJohn

Thankyou for your reply doctor I'm happy to be a part of this community and I have always helped people even in member created rooms. I've made so many friends on this site that now we are connected in real life too, I possibly wouldn't be able to make such good friends anywhere else.
I understand what you have explained to me in your reply and I will pay heed to it.
Kind regards,
Fanora Hunsford

[Healing the Damage]

Originally Posted by DocJohn

If you want chat to be more supportive, and see harmful behavior taking place, send someone on the community support team a report. We can't act on things we do not know.

My problem with this is when it is a member who is part of the community support team who is either not stopping harmful conversations/behaviors, or who is kicking/banning people from the user created rooms.

[IrisBloom]

As stated above, some of us create rooms intended for fun, friendly chat. When someone comes in and starts talking about their MI issues and elaborates on their problems and treats the room like their own therapy session, it is very disruptive and unfair to the people there who just want to have fun and relax. Also as stated above, there are other default rooms specifically for that purpose. One can't (or shouldn't) go into someone else's room and take over the topic or bring everyone's mood down. One also shouldn't go into a private room and demand that the topic should be changed because it offends them. As far as I know everyone has the right to create their own room with whatever topic they want to discuss.

Isn't sex chat what the "Adult Chat" was made for?
First of all, we have minors that come on chat and I'm pretty sure it's illegal to have sexual chat with minors, in the states as well as in other parts if the world.

When I first joined chat I was a minor and I've had grown members saying sexual things to me, but when I asked them to stop, they did, indeed stop. What's happening in chat now is people don't stop, they think they are above both the guidelines of this forum as well as above the law.

I can't just sit back and see that members are abusing their privileges as user created room moderators and I can't just sit back and see this lovely community become so warped and unlawful.

I'm not saying not to talk about sex, I'm just saying we should have sex chat in the Adult Chat room instead of in user created rooms where we have abuse victims and minors in chat. Orr, if sex chat is going to happen in the use created rooms, there needs to be something in the description stating that sexual chat will happen in that room.

It's probably not worth the effort though.
I am simply asking that the rules be written down in chat where members can clearly see then as to not ignore them and abuse their privileges as moderators.

I'll admit, I had some of the guidelines confused for another mental health forum I was a part of that is almost exactly the same set up as this one. (their guidelines was no pornographic or sexually explicit material was to be shared on the forums or on their chat).

Apparently after doing some extensive searching through PsychCentral's Terms of Use and Rules and Guidelines I found that there was no rules against posting sexually explicit material either on the forums or on chat.

[DocJohn]

Indeed, human sexuality is an important component of most people's lives and their mental health. To deny it as a topic of discussion is to deny a component of our humanity, which we're not open to doing.

We don't limit sex talk to just the existing PC Adult Chat room. But we would ask chat room creators to keep these concerns in mind when creating their "fun" room and if sex is a topic that is okay for discussion in their room, they make that clear in their room's description.

I leave chat when something is being discussed that makes me feel uncomfortable.