PSA: What I learned organizing a 7Sage study group

I wanted to share this as a PSA for anyone participating in or organizing study groups on 7Sage — and, hopefully, as constructive feedback for 7Sage itself.

I recently created a free study group for the November LSAT. The goal was simple: get people together consistently, review PTs, work through difficult questions, and help each other improve. Around 20 people joined.

Then someone joined and immediately began soliciting members for a paid course.

I’m going to link their profile below. Please do your own due diligence before giving anyone money or personal information. I’m not interested in making accusations beyond what I can personally document.

https://7sage.com/discussion/profile/Ethan%E2%80%8C

What really frustrated me, however, was trying to figure out how to deal with the situation.

As the person who created the group — and therefore has some responsibility for the environment and the people I invited into it — I expected to have some basic ability to moderate it.

Instead, I couldn't find a way to remove the person from the group, and I couldn't find a straightforward way to report the behavior.

I also tried to communicate with 7Sage about it, only to discover that there doesn't appear to be an actual human being available to talk to. You're essentially left dealing with an AI/bot support system.

That was really disappointing.

There is a tremendous amount of money involved in LSAT preparation. Students are spending hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars on courses, tutoring, and prep materials. If you're going to provide a community environment where students organize study groups, I think there should be some basic safeguards:

• The ability for group organizers to remove disruptive or inappropriate members

• A straightforward way to report suspicious behavior

• A way to contact a human when there's a legitimate moderation issue

• Most importantly, some protection against unsolicited commercial solicitation

I won't go into the full extent of the gray market surrounding LSAT preparation — and the ecosystem that LSAC inadvertently props up — at this time. But please, be extremely careful before spending money on a third party. Do your research, verify who you're dealing with, and don't assume that someone offering a product or service through an LSAT community is automatically legitimate.

I also found that the platform lacks some of the collaborative tools I was hoping to use, particularly around screen sharing, marking things up together, and whiteboard functionality.

https://7sage.com/discussion/62242/question-for-people-who-use-discord-for-study-groups

I genuinely wanted to keep the group on 7Sage. I don't particularly like moving people onto third-party platforms (not even to mention all the drama with discord), which is why I tried to make this work here in the first place.

Unfortunately, I don't feel comfortable organizing a group when I can't adequately moderate it.

So I'm dissolving the original group and moving the new one to Discord.

But I don't want the takeaway from this to simply be “7Sage bad, use Discord.”

I actually like what 7Sage provides. I have personally paid real money for this resource, I still will continue to pay money for this resource and the reason I created the group here in the first place is because I believe there is tremendous value in students being able to help each other.

That's exactly why I hope someone at 7Sage sees this as an opportunity for improvement rather than simply a complaint.

If students are going to use the platform to build communities, they should have the tools to keep those communities safe, useful, and focused on studying.

I learned something from this process, even if I wish I hadn't had to learn it this way.

I'm still going to try to build the community I originally set out to build. I just have to do it somewhere else for now.

Hopefully, something positive ultimately comes from the experience.