On 08/11/2007, Florian Straub flominator@gmx.net wrote:
"Gregory Maxwell" gmaxwell@gmail.com wrote on Wednesday, November 07, 2007 3:31 AM:
What do people think of automatically assigning new users to a user advocate who speaks their language? Something where experienced users can sign in when they are around and new users will be assigned to them? Would that help? I don't think we need to worry about scaling it at first: if we are unable to assign advocates for everyone, we could at least help some.. and that would be an improvement.
We have something like that at German Wikipedia ( http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:MP ). There is a list of people available as mentors with a brief description of their fields of work.
People interested in mentors have to put a template on their user page in order to be found. That would be a nice solution on Commons, too. Especially when people have to be active to get a mentor, you avoid all the zombies wasting your time.
What do you think?
Go for it. The worst that happens is that noone uses it, and we are back where we are now. The best that happens is people who want help get it and the community grows.
cheers, Brianna