User blog:Brandon Rhea/Amp up your wiki with the Admin Mentor Program

One of the most vital components of any successful wiki is the user or group of users who have been entrusted with the role of an administrator. More and more people become admins every day, sometimes for the first time&mdash;and sometimes without experience or as much wiki knowledge as they would like. We know how daunting that can be, and we want to help!

Earlier this year, we launched the Admin Support Team, with an aim of helping new administrators become the best admins they can be. After a lot of review and learning, we have decided to update this program. I am excited to announce that today we are officially launching our newly revamped admin support group called the Admin Mentor Program (AMP)! This is a program to empower admins with the knowledge and skills they need to best manage their community, allowing it to grow beyond what they think is possible and become the best that Wikia has to offer.

What is AMP?

If you take part in the Admin Mentor Program, a team of admin mentors will come to your wiki and help you with whatever you have indicated you want to learn about. Mentors will work with the wiki's admins on a set of teachable goals for the wiki. Such goals can include learning about how to best structure a wiki, how to create and expand policies, and even create an awesome design. Mentors will also focus on best practices of wiki management to help admins foster a community-oriented and community-led environment.

We have three teams of two mentors from all across the world&mdash;from the United States to Canada, from Finland to Australia&mdash;that will work directly with wikis that sign up. Our teams are SpikeToronto and Tm_T; Mathmagician and Surriela; and Cook Me Plox and The 888th Avatar.

There is an emphasis on "showing" rather than "doing"&mdash;the mentors are less about doing something for admins and more about showing admins how to do something. That ensures that the admins will be left with more knowledge than when the mentors arrived.

Our teams are already working on a few wikis, and so far they're off to a great start!

How can I sign up?

We have a newly revamped Admin Mentor Program page here. On that page, you can find an overview of the program and how you can sign up. Unfortunately we can’t choose everyone, so we will be looking for wikis with the best potential for growth&mdash;but no matter what, we will absolutely make sure you get the assistance you need. Trellar and I will handle the sign up page for now, and in the next few weeks we will transition that to the mentors.

Do you feel you could gain more admin experience? Are there things you would like to know but don’t know how to learn them? Do you want to learn how to best grow your wiki? If the answer to any of those questions is yes, this is the program for you. Stop on by the sign up page and join today. Our mentors are looking forward to working with you!