Posted by Captain Katy Darrah (AFComm, Meridian Fleet) in Proposal - Shifting focus of mentors program from ship-based to subject-based

Posted by Rear Admiral Calé Reilly (STF Surgeon General / Academy Commandant / AFComm, Pioneer Fleet / EGO) in Proposal - Shifting focus of mentors program from ship-based to subject-based

Posted by Nathan Miller in Proposal - Shifting focus of mentors program from ship-based to subject-based
Posted by… suppressed (1) by the Post Ghost! 👻
Hi,

In my second month as mentor’s co-ordinator, I’ve been tracking active mentorships and, currently, we have no command mentorships that I am aware of, and only two main fleet new player mentorships (that may or may not still be ongoing - am waiting for feedback from the persons involved).

So I’ve been thinking of how we could possibly make the mentors program more appealing and/or useful and, one suggestion raised by my predecessor, Thomas Bates, was to consider shifting the focus from assigning mentors by ship, to assigning mentors by subject area. And after discussing this idea at length with the current Academy Commandant, Calé, I think the idea has a lot of merit.

So I figured I’d open it for discussion to see what everyone else thinks. Some potential points to discuss:

1. Subject Areas

What might relevant subject areas be? A few suggestions off the top of my head are:

• How to roleplay a specific department (with a separate mentor or mentors for each)


• Writing believable treknobabble


• Designing a new ship/technology spec


• Creating and updating MOTD’s


• Writing romantic relationships


• Creating interesting swings


• Writing cabinet applications

Obviously some of these would require more longer-term mentoring than others (so something like ‘writing romantic relationships’ or ‘creating interesting swings’ might only take a handful of interactions, whereas ‘designing a new ship spec’ would be more intensive). But I’d love to hear your feedback on these ideas or any other ideas you might have instead.

2. Assigning Mentors

If we do decide to implement some subject-specific mentors then what approach would be the best one to take?
a. Formalise, in advance, a list of agreed subjects and then allow people to volunteer for those specific subjects only?
b. Allow volunteers to specify their own subject matter in alignment with whatever skills they feel they can offer that someone else might wish to learn?
c. Some combination of the two?

3. Ship-specific mentors

If we did go down this route then would we keep the ship-specific mentors also? Even just as a ‘friendly face’ when a new player is landing on their first ever ship? Calé made a good suggestion that we might take the approach of having primary/secondary/tertiary mentors (although we don’t need to label them as such). Roughly broken down as:

• Primary mentors - your ‘ship buddy’ who looks out for you when you’re new and helps you to settle in and find places to post


• Secondary mentors - skills-based mentors as described above


• Tertiary mentors - specialist mentors like CO/XO/DH/GM specific

Is having this many mentors overkill or too much of a potential administrative burden? Or is it a nice way to allow more people to get involved with sharing their knowledge to other players? Again, interested to hear opinions.

4. Other Suggestions

If you don’t like this idea at all, then what other approaches might make mentorship more appealing to the club at large? Or alternatively, do you feel like the program works just fine as is and should be left alone?

Thanks in advance for your time,

• Sharon (Mentor’s Co-Ordinator)

What need would this change be fulfilling? The current program fills a very specific need: providing support to new members, helping familiarize them with our method of roleplaying, our site, or idiosyncrasies, etc. This support is usually best provided by someone on the same ship, as they can easily keep tabs on the mentee, see their issues and circumstances, how they’re improving, and easily make suggestions.

The subject matters are already covered by the Academy courses, or would be good suggestions on Calé’s recent post on the Campus Boards.

The chain of command should, ideally, act as a chain of mentorship already, especially for CO/XO. Having someone else mentoring your XO feels like an intrusion on the CO/XO relationship.

So, what need do you see this fulfilling?

Nathan

This would be taking the various types of mentor ship going on and tying them together. It wouldn’t require any changes to any documentation as far as we can determine but I am happy to be corrected in this.

At the moment We have the ships mentors who would continue in the primary role, we have the command mentor ship programme which started well but seems to have been a bit abandoned. This is a shame and something I think we could revive a little bit. These would be the tertiary mentors.

Really the only difference is that we are suggesting creating a secondary mentors group who may or may not be the same people but could be guides to things as Sharon suggested. This is happening across the club already anyway. When Linds and I were looking to create a new ship spec we sought out people who were experts and were very lucky to have Nick join us. I know if I were considering becoming a GM who to go speak to, if I wanted to make a custom species who I could ask for advice. If I wanted to suggest something in command the best way to go about it.

I say I know each time there and I’m sure many others do as well but there are some who don’t and that’s where having a list where you could go look and find someone yourself would be good.

Basically, what we are suggesting isn’t new, it’s not even different than we currently have it’s just expanding an reorganising a little. The need is the need to streamline and organise the processes we have to support members old and new in trying out new things or just finding someone new to reach out to and make a new connection.

Calé

So basically instead of a new player ticking “I want a mentor” that option might still be available, but it’s more subject-based, right?

I don’t see a need for some of these. Writing cabinet applications? That can already be fulfilled by picking someone you trust (could be your DH, CO, XO, a close friend you’ve come to have in the club, etc) and ask them to look over what you wrote. You don’t need a specific mentorship thing for it. Besides, how many people would specifically sign up for this specific subject, rather than doing what I said above (which could even be faster depending on who you ask)

How to roleplay a specific department (with a separate mentor or mentors for each)
This is already possible with the courses. Plus, if someone wants to be a DH in a certain department, the best way to get to know that department in the first place is to be a JO in it, and read other posts from players in said department.
Writing believable treknobabble
While I could see this, to a point, a lot of what you see is on MA, MB, or other wikis. Plus, this might be better as a course or a document in the library rather than a mentoring “course”
Designing a new ship/technology spec
This is similar to the above. I mean, this would, again, be better as something in the library or on 10F than a real mentorship course. Few people who actually design specs/tech/species even really think “let me get a mentor for this” they merely ask people who end up making them for advice themselves.
Creating and updating MOTD’s
This one is, again, a very niche one. You either have HTML/CSS skill, or you don’t. No amount of mentoring or teaching is really gonna fix that in any “quick” term. This would be better as a guide written and posted somewhere.
Writing romantic relationships
Again, this is very, very niche to me. This is something you only see a handful of times in any show, and even on STF there’s a specific rating we stick to, which should generally tell you what limits you have. I’ve found (from experience) that for this, experience and trial-and-error is more helpful than having someone teach it to you. Especially if you and another player are doing it, and can write off-site so you can work on wording etc.
Creating interesting swings
Considering any non-standard position is a swing from my understanding of it, then this is rather easy, and “interesting” is different for each person. A regular non-special human without an interesting or exciting history, but lots of potential might be interesting to one person, but boring to another.

If we want more interest in the mentorship program, maybe point out the CO/XO/DH mentoring. The reason there’s not a ton of interest, is, in my opinion, the fact that there’s A, only so much to teach. And B, most members, after the first month or two, see no more need for a mentor. Most members who have been here for a while don’t see a need for it because it’s so focused for new members.

Just my two cents, I’m not trying to be hostile here, if I came off as such at all, I’m just giving my honest opinion.

Katy

Hi Katy,

thanks for your feedback. The example subjects I gave were very much just that - examples off the top of my head. So I don’t really want people to get too hung up on the specifics of those and would rather they just considered ‘subject-based mentoring’ as a general idea.

However, since it might help me to explain just why I think subject-based mentoring is a good idea, I will reply to a few of your specific points below.

Writing cabinet applications? That can already be fulfilled by picking someone you trust (could be your DH, CO, XO, a close friend you’ve come to have in the club, etc) and ask them to look over what you wrote.

This presumes that a player has someone they know and/or trust enough to have read over their applications. Not all players use discord or form close relationships with other players away from the boards. But that shouldn’t exclude them from being able to offer their skills if they see an area they could contribute to. Additionally, I think there could be benefits to having a ‘neutral’ third party read over your stuff as opposed to your best friend who would always want to make you happy first and foremost.

How to roleplay a specific department (with a separate mentor or mentors for each)
This is already possible with the courses. Plus, if someone wants to be a DH in a certain department, the best way to get to know that department in the first place is to be a JO in it, and read other posts from players in said department.

Personally I feel like courses and mentors are two completely different things that might each appeal to different people. I’m just thinking back to my own arrival as a cadet when I’d wanted science but was given engineering and, in all honesty, almost quit straight off because I had no clue how to make an engineering post (some might say I still don’t, but that’s a different story, lol!)
I think we have some amazing players here who write incredibly detailed and technical posts that read, to me as a layperson. as wholly believable for their chosen departments. And I, for one, feel like I could learn a lot from them. Particularly in my own weak areas, like medical. Could I do the exam instead? I guess. But there’s a reason I’ve personally never taken an exam at STF and that’s because I prefer interactive learning to just reading and then answering questions. It’s a personal preference but having someone who would be willing to talk me through the art of believable treknobabble, or how to come up with a realistic diagnosis for a ‘patient’, would be something I’d find incredibly useful.

Designing a new ship/technology spec
This is similar to the above. I mean, this would, again, be better as something in the library or on 10F than a real mentorship course.

And similarly, my response is the same as above, in that while some people would prefer to use a learning document and go through it on their own, others might prefer to have a mentor walk them through it.

Few people who actually design specs/tech/species even really think “let me get a mentor for this” they merely ask people who end up making them for advice themselves.

Just to play devil’s advocate for a moment, how do you know that people who want to design a spec don’t look for a mentor? Or is it more that the only people we see actually submitting specs are those who never needed a mentor in the first place?

Creating and updating MOTD’s
This one is, again, a very niche one. You either have HTML/CSS skill, or you don’t. No amount of mentoring or teaching is really gonna fix that in any “quick” term. This would be better as a guide written and posted somewhere.

I agree that this is niche. But I completely disagree that “you either have HTML/CSS skill or you don’t”. In fact I taught myself HTML/CSS exclusively by creating STF MOTD’s!
And as someone who is now regularly asked to create MOTD’s for other people, and usually try to give some explanations to my code when I do, I think this is actually one of the subjects that people could really benefit from, and quickly, depending on how advanced they wanted to get.

If we want more interest in the mentorship program, maybe point out the CO/XO/DH mentoring. The reason there’s not a ton of interest, is, in my opinion, the fact that there’s A, only so much to teach. And B, most members, after the first month or two, see no more need for a mentor.

I completely agree with this, that there is only so much to teach on any of these subjects. And I’m in no way trying to suggest that these subject mentoring partnerships should become some huge, drawn out thing. Maybe ‘mentor’ isn’t even the right word? Maybe ‘buddy’ would be better? I dunno.

Anyway, thanks again for your feedback, Katy, and I hope you at least found my responses interesting, even if you still disagree.

• Sharon