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The future of Under 16's Chat
TheMix
Posts: 3,134 Boards Guru
Hey folks,
This is an important update regarding Under 16's Chat.
As most of you will know, we run Under 16's Support Chats every other Saturday, from 6-7:30pm. The idea behind creating this sessions was to give our younger community a more focused space away from the hustle and bustle of the main chat sessions, which can get pretty busy at times.
We've been running these sessions for well over a year. Although they are used, they remain very quiet and the majority of group members tend to be older. So we've been doing some thinking about where we go with Under 16's Chat from here - do we continue with it? Are there things we can change or improve about it to make the space more useful? These are questions we've been pondering.
To give us time to think about these questions and decide where to go next, we're going to be hitting 'pause' on these sessions for now. This break will give us some breathing space to think about how we can best help our younger members integrate with our community and feel supported.
Part of this process will involve asking you guys what you think of the sessions - what you like about them, what you don't like, and any ideas you have for making them better. If you have some feedback or new ideas, great! Hold on to them and don't forget them - we'll be asking for your help soon.
Tl;dr: we won't be running Under 16's chats for a while, while we decide how best to more forward with them. We're expecting more concrete plans over the coming weeks and months and we'll be sure to update everyone with what we decide.
Any questions, just drop us a PM or reply to this thread.
Aife & Mike
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Comments
"The way that I have found the light in my life is through the expressive arts because I know that I will be accepted for the way I am." ~ Me
"I'm going to get strong again and see you soon. " ~ Anonymous
If people find support chat difficult and find this one more quiet as Aidan said then maybe it would be better to tweak say the age gap a little to under 18s or 20s ect.
Or change the chat name to something else.
It would be a good idea to get a poll going and contact the regular users so they have a say in the matter
I like the suggestion above about maybe raising the age slightly, maybe to 18 or even 19 (and leaving the lower age where it is at 11).
If I could think of any promotion ideas, I would share - but my mind is blank lol!
UPDATE: We're still working through the feedback you all gave us to decide what we're going to do with these sessions. It's taking a bit longer than we'd like, but we're hoping to have something concrete soon. We'll post an update here with anything new.
Mike & the team
Thanks again for the feedback, everyone!
Mike & the team