Making Mentoring Less Thankless

I posted the following in another thread. . . I didn't mean it to be, but it was somewhat off topic and a bit of hijack. . . luckily noone let it hijack them. However, this is an issue I've thought a lot about lately, and would greatly appreciate the communities feedback on it. Sorry in advance for the long post - if you make it through it, you get a cookie

I've edited out the references to the issue in the previous thread.

Okay, I don't want to sound whiny, I'd seriously like to start a constructive dialogue about the following issue:

Mentoring has become an absolutely thankless job.

Now, before people start screaming at me "Well then, don't be a Mentor". . . I think that the Mentoring program is important to have continue.

Have you looked at the Event Calendar lately? Ever used that drop down that filters so you can see just the Mentor events?

I did this recently, and was fairly mortified to see just how few Mentor events had been scheduled. I started looking at myself, and the fact that I hadn't been doing Mentor events for awhile, and tried to decide why that was.

One of the problems with the world increasing in population so much is that it does increase the possibility of running into the "bad eggs" (I'm speaking of new people here). Doing a Show & Tell event, then having someone IM you when they don't win any money for the green sphere they made (this happened) and yelling about how the event was obviously rigged to give money to my friends can be quite discouraging.

In the real world, jobs where you can run into bad eggs - nurses at a mental hospital, police officers - can be quite dangerous for the soul. You tend to remember the cases that were most difficult, and while this may be a tiny tiny percentage of the people you come in contact with, since these are the memories that stick with you, you can start to expect every person you come across to be a bad egg.

To the Mentors out there: try to keep this in mind. Do your best to formulate your memories around those truly great people you meet - the ones that say things like "Great Basics class, you helped me sooo much, Thanks! " Keep these memories close to your heart and fresh in your mind so that you'll come to expect that all people are going to respond this way. More and more, bad eggs will seem to be an extremely rare occasion.

To the community as a whole: perhaps we can discuss ways to make the Mentor system a little less thankless? This part might sound like me whining a bit, and I'm sorry if it does. . . but it used to be that I felt a little more pride at being a Mentor. Doing a Mentor event was rewarded back in the day, by at least a smidgeon more event money. Now, anyone that does any event at the Dore Stage can get the same payment. I think this is a good thing, and shouldn't be changed, but it does make doing a Mentor event seem less special.

More discouraging (at least for me) is the current more strict restrictions on how many events we are allowed to do. If I'm in a mood to do lots of events during the week, I'm limited to seven events - all well and good, except that I have to choose between doing a Mentor event or doing an event at my place and making much more money, and maybe getting more of the only thing LL rewards and seems to appreciate: dwell. I've been told on more than one occasion that I'm an idiot for choosing the former and have no right to complain about the latter, as Mentoring is my choice.

And, it is my choice. But I do like Mentoring. I do like helping the community. Helping out new folks as much as possible. I think the Mentor progam is an important and necessary one.

Is there any way that we could possibly encourage Mentoring, as opposed to having a system that so discourages it?

I know one thing that would be great is if Mentor events didn't count toward my seven events for the week. Say, if I could do seven Mentor events on top of seven normal events at my place. Some people may cry foul, but if its left to someone having to make a choice between the two types of events, its fairly obvious what people will choose. Mentor events are a service to the community, and I don't think you should be made to feel foolish for choosing to do one.

Any other constructive suggestions as to make Mentoring a little less thankless are highly welcome!

Oh, a sort of P.S. I've done a Mentor event each night over the last week - mostly Basics. I've met some really great new folks, and have had some really good classes. There are many and beautiful rewards to be found in Mentoring, if only we can try and make it less difficult to find those rewards

Thanks for reading this long ass post.

P.P.S - Thank you Char for being your amazing, wonderful self!

Okay, just wanted to clarify. . .above I said that Mentoring is an "absolutely" thankless job. What I should have said was: Mentoring can at times feel like an absolutely thankless job.

I am of Confucian thoughtline, and I do believe teachers deserve no less than honored gratitude and much appreciation for their contributions to the society at large, in helping to educate the green such as myself. And then, the students of one generation can become the teachers of the next, thus continuing a legacy of shared knowledge.

Kex Godel and I talking about this lately, along the broader sphere of not only Mentors but Helpers and those who make that kind of positive, tutorial difference in SL.

Ever since then, I am of the belief that event categories should be subscribable to, with auto-notifications to let you know when something you're interested in is coming up. Specifically, newbies to SL should have a checkbox ticked to automatically inform them of Mentor and other relevant, instructional events. They could always turn it off later, but the main thing is: it'd be efficient, accessible, helpful, and increase audience attendance for those who still feel lost after the Welcome Area and have a lot of questions.

I applaud you, Onei, for wanting to help even more. I agree these positive efforts should be encouraged and rewarded, and this could be done with more public recognition on the Second Life website, and in more displays inworld.



Indeed... and some these people will likely be the next round of mentors!

I have seen billboards for "Instructor/Mentor of the month", and these are nice. If there was a type of Mentor HQ or even several of them with a big wall highlighting these sorts of achievements and enlightening everyone to come and visit and partake in the collective flow, consider what would happen then. More recognition, more awareness. This is an affirmative thing to toot your horn about. A surprising number of newcomers -- hey, myself previously included -- did not even know about the instructional events being offered.



Absolutely. As a wise sage once said, as long as there are people who learn, there must be people who teach.

Okay guys. . .

Just talked with Char, and this is really awesome.

Apparently I (and a couple of other Mentors I had talked to) had misread our latest notecard on mentoring wrong. We were told that the 7 Mentor events you can do were to be counted in addition to the 7 Resident events.

Somehow (I must be so daft) I had read this as meaning that the 7 Mentor events were counted with the 7 resident limit.

Thanks so much Char for clearing that up and I'm so glad you guys decided to go that route. I feel uber appreciated now

And any of you Mentors out there that may have misread it and hosting less events because. . . Get out there and start doing those events!

This is truly great. . . a very real sense of relief.

Looking at the calendar, I see we could use more Mentor events, but we are in Desperate need of more Instructor events. I haven't done those myself, but will start trying.

SL is pushing for innovation, and wanted to have it happen through self instruction through modifiable objects. One of us opposition people's biggest arguments against it was that classes can teach people what they need to know. Let's prove it by actually having classes available!

Thanks so much for the kind words Torley

1 reason it is not completely thankless - LL has hired from mentors. Or broader - it's something to put on your resume. It would help people in customer service, software design, sales, or game testing.

That's an awesome positive Hiro, thanks!

I really didn't mean for this post to sound as negative as it did. Like I said, sometimes it can be made to feel thankless, but you have to focus on the good things. I believe the Mentor program is appreciated. Just hoping to make some other Mentors feel appreciated as well.

Have you hugged a Mentor today?

Oneironaut,

I agree that mentors are definitely underappreciated. I try and thank / rate / encourage mentors / other event hosts at any cool event I go to - be it show & tell, trivia, etc.

Mentors are great folks

"UBER!" there's that word again, I've seen it 5 times in like a couple of days now. Connections all over the place, I tell ya. Having fun and keeping things positive is important, but so is being honest and not "faking the funk" when it comes to what you believe may need to be improved in the system. That is uplifting and helps us all benefit as a community. What's good can be made... BETTAH!

You know Onie, after reading your post I tend to agree about the bad eggs aspect. Used to I ran a Trivia event every week and did mentoring and was an instructor for a while.

Here are some of the things that made me slowly sway away from doing any events for a while thus far.

#1 Thankless, when you conducting an event and had to call a Linden ever 2 minutes because some anus decided the event was their gun range became totaly annoying and distracted from the event.

#2 Demoralizing, when you teach 30 new people new techniques in building and you have a little group that not only thinks they know more than you do but proceed to degrad you for your teaching abilities.

#3 Owning a License Trademark from LL. Due to the uproar that Miss Catherine Cotten interjected into many conversations about Advertising I felt it would not be appropriate to condut a mentor event espcecially in Lieu of opening the SLVisions Website that sold Real Life Tshirts. This would have been a Major Conflict as then anyone could have arbitrarly said "Shadow has a TM License therefore he is getting preferential treatment." and if this was cooborated by any then that would lead to being dismissed from the mentors, an organization that I was instrumental in getting off the ground with the 5 other Mentors in the begining.

These were fundamental set backs in the reasoning that I quit teaching and have not conducted any mentor events for a while. On occasion now I will teach a Newb some buildng tricks and offer help on PSP but not as frequently as I did when the heyday of SL bringing in newbs was. The biggest thing other than the forementioned is DRAMA. People eat it up and try to drag anyone and everyone they can into it. I'm done with drama. I'm done with B.S. I'm done with all the strife and stress that it created in my real life.

I was one of the first 5 Mentors in SL and Im still a member but I am seriously reconsidering my position on things as of late.

But thank you Onie I do appreciate the post it kind of opened my eyes again because as of late I have been slowly becomming very sarcastic due to the negativity offered both in world and on the forums at times.

Sincerly, Shadow Weaver

Just my L$0.02 ...

I enjoy Mentoring... I don't mind having to call in a Linden to deal with an idiot with a gun... (I have in the past, got a huge cheer from the crowd for just shooting the griefer out of the sim... but that's another story)...

My problem is the new events list... You asked how many of us looked to see how many Mentor events there are... I ask... How many people even look at the board anyway? I'd wager most people go to events after the host invites them personally...

The last SL Basics class I hosted... a few weeks ago, maybe a month ago... was in peak time... SL was full... I was busy, but since I'd booked the slot, I dutifully dropped what I was doing and headed to Stage 4.

There was one person there before me... but afk, so...

I waited around for about 30 minutes... This person was still afk... Not one other showed up...

People are using Live Help for SL Basics... it's easier for them, they don't have to go anywhere... and they get a whole bunch of Mentors to help them...

So anyway... that was my last basics class... if people don't turn up, why should I schedule them? People only go to events where they can win money anyway...

I like Torley's suggestions of a mentor HQ where you could see the different mentors of the month of past months. Also in the HQ could display maybe currently online mentors to take questions. It could also list all the current mentors even offline.

Also the idea of having the mentor checkbox for events would be neat. I'm not sure though, I might find this annoying if I was a newbie, and might be too confused/lazy to figure out how to turn it off.

Another suggestion would be to have a special Mentor Event category, simular to Mature Events having their own special star and icon. A Mentor Event could have its own Icon in the Events list as well as on the map. This would help distinguish Mentor events from others.

I know that may be biased towards mentor classes then, but it *is* LL sponsored, so there *should* be some biast towards it.

We all know that having a special icon next to your event doesn't automaticly make it better anyway.

I'm glad that mentor event limits are seperate from normal event limits, that would bother me and be something I'd change.

Another thing for events and handling "bad eggs" could be... not sure if this is even possible... but to have all mentor events held on group mentor owned land, to allow members of the mentor group to freeze other individuals who may be causing trouble, or to send them home or eject them from the land.

If thats not possible, I suggest a group feature to allow that possible if desired.

Even if *thats* not possible, a script could be made, by one of the lindens, or hell even I'll do it and give it open source to a linden to plop down, but anyway, the script would be your basic eject/send home script that only listened to members of the Mentor group. Have a linden plop it down at stage4 or wherever else mentor events are held, and there yah go.

Thats a limited solution, there are plenty of better scripts out there that could allow mentors to administer their own events without having to wait for linden response on greifers.

Being a mentor is an honorable thing, anyone who is willing to help others is honorable to me. All mentors deserve recognition.

And these mentoring HQ things with the classes inside/outside should be in their own seperate sim, in which a mentor may temporarily suspend anyone from the sim. All activity in the sim should automatically be recorded so the Lindens may determine if the suspension was warranted, and if so, consider permanent banning from the sim or account suspension. Of course, mentors who blatently suspend people from a sim for no valid reason whatsoever should be removed, but I doubt many would.

Addition in response to Siobhan's post...

I myself never look at the event callendar cause I'm usualy not an event-going person. I always have wanted to sit in on some classes though to see if theres something I've been missing in doing things or to see if theres anything new to learn. But I never have time.

Hanging out at the welcome area in the early morning alot though theres alot of people who always want to learn how to build etc. I usualy tell them to watch out for classes on stuff they'd be interisted in and to check out the Ivory Tower.

I still think Classes server a purpose though because there is something nice about someone being there showing you how to do things.

Also I learned alot from when I was a newbie going to the UI Basics events at Stage4. So I think theres alot to be learned from them, and there may still be some interest.

however I'm not a mentor either, so I can't really say how many people have been showing up for the events, only how many I tell to look out for them.

Edit to add: I like Moleculor's idea also, a learning sim for newbies with class space etc. is an idea thats been tossed around for awhile now.

Siobhan, you bring up a very interesting point. . . the catch 22 of the new event notification system.

As we now know, you have to go through the event list and select Notify for events you want to have announced.

This is one of the first things I let new people know about in a Basics class. . .

I'm sure you already see the paradox.

I think that newly created accounts should have all of their event (or maybe just mentor) notifications turned on. Then, maybe a single checkbox for "I will check notify in the future for events I want to have announced."

Basically, a new person would need to opt out of notifications and then gain the ability to opt in to the ones they want to see.

As it is now, I usually try to fly around the welcome area about 10 minutes before a Basics and let new people know a class is starting. However, this generally doesn't get much response either as the person has no idea where the dore stage is, even though they are right there on it.

Sometimes I feel like I am spamming. One thing people could do to help is if you see a Basics class on the event calendar, and happen to be talking to a new person, let them know about the notify feature, or if the class is about to start, point them in the direction of the stage.

Anyway, thanks for all the positive responses

If you are having problems with holding Mentor or Instructor events in the Linden sims, and don't enjoy being powerless to eject griefers, consider teaching or running clases at the University of Second Life!

The University of Second Life was founded as a private, player-run organization in a lag-free simulator (Phobos) to provide a teaching environment independent of the limitations inherent in the Linden provided venues. (no power to eject griefers, no sharing of dwell, conflicts of interest being paid by the Lindens, etc).

USL Instructors are allowed to eject griefers from the University land, and receive compensation equal to the Linden sponsored L$500 per Mentor Event or Class. All through the player run and donation funded University of Second Life!

I can't believe I am admitting this on the forums, but I am a Mentor who has never held an event (something I am truly ashamed of). After hearing of the disruptive behaviour that has happened during Mentor events, I decided it wasn't worth the trouble. I'd much rather hang out at the Welcome Area and greet newbies or become a member of Live Help than hold an event and put up with that stress. I became a Mentor to help people but I refuse to subject my SL to anything even remotely stressful.

I support the idea of a separate Sim for Mentor events, with the power to temporarily eject griefers. Hank has also given a great suggestion - become a University of Second Life instructor. I'm seriously considering it.

Just my L$0.01...(figured it was only worth one cent )

Shadow,

<<Due to the uproar that Miss Catherine Cotten interjected into many conversations about Advertising I felt it would not be appropriate to condut a mentor event espcecially in Lieu of opening the SLVisions Website that sold Real Life Tshirts.>>

Yes, but "Miss Catherine Cotton" turned out to be right, didn't she? Perhaps not in the way she feared, but would anybody now come forward and claim that since then commercial interests had not spoiled the sl experience for many of us?

Siobhan,

<<So anyway... that was my last basics class... >>

That's a shame, they had become a kind of tradition. Really sorry you've had to stop them.

I think part of the problem of low attendance is due to the fact that the events listing is now so full of spam that people no longer bother to read it.

Not saying they won't come back, Selador... but for now, SL Basics is a waste of my time. I hope something happens to fix this.

I am a mentor & over all I LOVE it. There are a few issues I have, some of which have been mentioned...the biggest being the dealing with Griefing issues during mentoring events. I had a talk with Char not too long ago & she said that they were thinking about implementing a way that the mentors could be able to eject griefers. That would be wonderful.

Sio- sorry that your SL basics have been a bust as of late When I host them I have about 18-23 people most times. I don't think that live help should *replace* the SL basics I think it's very useful still I have had many thanks from the new residents for hosting it & I will certianly continue to It's nice to have a place to meet & talk face to face like that.