Board Thread:Staff Discussion/@comment-31135394-20191218171046

I'm starting a staff discussion about the advisorr program that Fandom Staff user Sannse approached HiccstridFan with here. The message is quoted below for convenience-

"Hello! I'm Sannse, from Fandom's Editor Experience team. I'm contacting you as the most recently active admin. Hopefully you can pass this on to others as needed.

One project that we're excited about launching is an initiative to pair newly registered users with experienced advisors (which they can choose from). These advisors would be available for answering basic editing questions and guiding appropriate edits, in the hope that these users will become active in the local community.

Why do this, rather than rely on admins and moderators? We've seen from research and experience (both from Wikipedia) that establishing a human bond with a peer "senpai" or mentor can have a better effect on the comfort of the newcomer, especially where the high volume of edits may cause the quick response of rollbacks rather than taking the time to walk new editors through their early work. While some communities do take that time and care among their leaders, we feel an additional level might put new users at ease and help them be more comfortable with editing. Ultimately, we feel like this project will either free up some time for admins and moderators, or designate them as approachable welcomers to talk to and guide new users. We want to see how effective this is on a relatively small number of communities and see if Fandom's results are consistent with those experienced on Wikipedia. If they are, we may pursue expanding the pilot program and perhaps seeking to build it into a core part of the new platform.

Here's what we would wish for your community to agree to:


 * At least one volunteer advisor, acting as an advisor and advocate helping newcomers. For the most part, this means responding to questions that newcomers leave the advisor in Discussions. Sometimes this may mean the advisor interacts with admins and moderators to address concerns regarding the newcomer. We have some advisors-at-large (those not tied to the local community, but available as fallbacks) already, but if you have ideas on who you might want to represent you in this role (or if you'd like to do so yourself!), feel free to contact me on my Wall.


 * Discussions / Feeds. Your community must have this active for the current solution to work. This is the primary method in which advisors have open communication with the users that choose them. We also recommend a Feeds channel of “Help Desk” where the communications can be placed, if you do not have a similar channel.


 * A change to your Welcome Messages to allow a method where a newcomer can choose an advisor. If you are currently participating in the MyDashboard program, there will be a card there to interact with an advisor.

We are testing this for the next two months, and will see what the future of the program is thereafter. Is this a program you would feel comfortable with placing on your community?"

I'll start off with my thoughts:
 * 1) Sounds like a great idea and it makes perfect sense, but are we an active enough wiki for it to be beneficial? We don't get many new editors anymore, and when we do, more often than not they're just trying to push a theory as fact, or they're only out to collect the virtual badges.
 * 2) Sounds like she's suggesting that non-staff members be the volunteers so they'd be "peers" with the newbies. We only have, what, three or four active non-staff editors who we'd be comfortable taking on such a role. Wouldn't hurt to ask them, but I'm afraid to hope for much. If only one volunteers, the newbies will end up not having a choice as the original idea presents.
 * 3) Let's face it, our Discussions and the main wiki may as well be in different universes. Few who frequent Discussions ever edit the main wiki, especially since the mobile apps are more popular with kids than web browsers, and I know at least one of the apps doesn't even allow for editing. And few who regularly edit ever frequent Discussions, either. Doesn't help that most posts in Discussions lately have been rather juvenile in nature since most of the users are [young] kids so the atmosphere over there isn't everyone's cup of tea. I'll admit it; sometimes it's not even mine.
 * 4) I'm also confused what she means by a Help Desk feed. Is she referring to Discussions "categories"? If that's the case, we'd have to rearrange categories again since we're already using all 10 allowed. Unless she's talking about an all new feature, which admittedly could be cool. We also have the "Questions and Answers" sub-forum here in the forums if we can use that.
 * 5) Sounds like the mentors are expected to volunteer rather than be nominated. So we could post an announcement or wiki notification (or both) about this and hope one of the trusted regulars bites. Should we direct them to this post, create a post in Discussions, or create a new post here on the forums?

I may sound like a pessimist, but I'm not saying it'll be a bad idea. I'm just laying out some issues that are worth taking into consideration. With that said, add your own thoughts and hopefully we'll be able to agree on a conclusion. 