Mentor Program?

[Submachine]

I think I should dedicate myself as a mentor to any new members who wants a guide to the forum life. However, I saw that the mentor program was shut down, but still, my experience says that there are still new players who might need more than the not always useful comments from the not always full chat.

[dragtom]

I'd have become a mentor quite a while ago,
if it didn't get shut down.

I support getting it up again,
especially with 1.4 coming..(right?)
new players need someone they are sure of isn't trolling them, especially in kong chat.
(people say questions should be asked in chat, yet the answers are wrong half the time).

does anyone know why the old program got shut down?

[dark ripper]

I'd have become a mentor quite a while ago,
if it didn't get shut down.

I support getting it up again,
especially with 1.4 coming..(right?)
new players need someone they are sure of isn't trolling them, especially in kong chat.
(people say questions should be asked in chat, yet the answers are wrong half the time).

does anyone know why the old program got shut down?

I think SG supervised it and well it died along with her disappearing.

[Submachine]

Even our beloved fellow TO n00b had a mentor once:

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/mentor-program/join-as-an-apprentice/msg374565/#msg374565

He could tell us how it went back then.

[andretimpa]

If I recall correctly (from people talking about it when it was a fresher subject, since it was already dead when I got here) the main problems were lack of organization / coordination and vague guidelines for the mentors. I also think there was supposed to be some kind of program for the mentors that never got done.

[Submachine]

That's why I prefer dropping both guidelines and time slots, because they slow things down. I would personally just tell my own advices to my apprentices, communicate them in PMs - so we don't have to be online at the same time -, answer all their questions, be helpful and maybe copy-paste main instructions to my other apprentices too.

[Blacksmith]

If this goes back up I'd like to join as a mentor as well.

[andretimpa]

As a formal thing I don't see this reappearing. Maybe it could be interesting if we made something informal like a thread where you posted if you are willing to mentor and if you are available or not. Apprentices would ask by PMs to be mentored, etc.

[dark ripper]

As a formal thing I don't see this reappearing. Maybe it could be interesting if we made something informal like a thread where you posted if you are willing to mentor and if you are available or not. Apprentices would ask by PMs to be mentored, etc.

I support this idea, someone in charge make a thread with all available members that would like to be mentors, telling a bit about themselves and why they would be good mentors, and of course the time(e.g. GMT 10-14) they are available. Official or unofficial this could help a lot of new members if it is done correctly.

[Submachine]

As a formal thing I don't see this reappearing. Maybe it could be interesting if we made something informal like a thread where you posted if you are willing to mentor and if you are available or not. Apprentices would ask by PMs to be mentored, etc.

I support this idea, someone in charge make a thread with all available members that would like to be mentors, telling a bit about themselves and why they would be good mentors, and of course the time(e.g. GMT 10-14) they are available. Official or unofficial this could help a lot of new members if it is done correctly.

I also think that what we can do would be a member-powered organisation. If we would have 1 topic for mentors and 1 topic for apprentices, it would be enough. The only formal thing needed is that the 2 topics must be kept near to each other, but even if we can't stick them together, we can link them to each other in the OPs.

About available timezones, I don't think we should bother with that. We should do it as comfortable for both mentors and apprentices as we can, that's why I suggest non-real-time PM communication.

[Submachine]

Where should be the best place for the Mentor and Apprentice topic? It should be somewhere, where the newly introduced people can find it by themselves, while not being in a thematically wrong place (for example, we can't put it in the False God section just to lure attention ). I thought about http://elementscommunity.org/forum/general-discussion/. At first we may need to advertise it a bit in the Introduce Yourself section, but hopefully later people will find it by themselves if it will be a success. (and if not, it's better that noone finds it easily ^^")

Anyway, it's nice to see that this many people would volunteer to help new players. I put up a poll whether we should have time slots or not.

[Blacksmith]

Where should be the best place for the Mentor and Apprentice topic? It should be somewhere, where the newly introduced people can find it by themselves, while not being in a thematically wrong place (for example, we can't put it in the False God section just to lure attention ). I thought about http://elementscommunity.org/forum/general-discussion/. At first we may need to advertise it a bit in the Introduce Yourself section, but hopefully later people will find it by themselves if it will be a success. (and if not, it's better that noone finds it easily ^^")

Anyway, it's nice to see that this many people would volunteer to help new players. I put up a poll whether we should have time slots or not.

Why not have it at the very same place as the old mentor program? I personally think it would be funnier just to pick a member instead of having time zone choose.