Hi everyone,
This is a semi-staff-post. It's not in the staff blog category and won't be advertised anywhere. The idea is just to give a central space to talk about the advisor experiment we are working on at the moment - both for those taking part in the experiment, and those interested in it.
This project is based on a similar project on Wikipedia. The idea is to give new editors a specific person to contact about any problems or questions they have on a wiki. The "apprentices" will be able to choose their advisor, and then can expect to have that person available to them for help and advice.
Advisors are volunteers from the wiki in question, and/or users with global experience who can give guidance on any wiki. They will commit to being available for the users who select them, and will sign a pledge outlining the requirements of the task. The pledge is here, and we welcome any edits you think might help. Please don't sign the pledge unless you are already part of the experiment though.
There are just a few wikis involved in this project so far, we will look at the success of this pilot project (do new editors stick around more often with this kind of personalized support?) and decide whether to expand it to other interested wikis.
We welcome the community's thoughts on this, and any questions, thoughts and requests for support from our inaugural advisors!