With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

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882 days, 8 hours, 16 minutes ago

With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring games, I'd like to put out one idea I've been kicking around for a while and see what you think. The concept is basically "community mentoring", and is basically an expansion of the mentoring I do in the AI-played MvM games to the community at large.

Essentially, players would be able to opt in as community mentors on their profile page, and then they would be notified of questions asked in MvM games by email. You can actually do this now for any individual MvM game by showing interest in it, but this would auto-subscribe you to all of them, or at least those without a human mentor.

We would also open up mentee positions to be public viewable even for games in progress, to allow community mentors to see what was going on and offer better advice. That shouldn't be too big a deal since MvM games have full visibility on anyways.

This would allow community members to assist with mentoring without the full commitment of playing as a Mentor, while also freeing up some of my time to work on other things. And I think it wouldn't be too hard to implement since most all of the functions are already in place, just only available to admins.

My hope is that this could improve the response time to answers, as well as the depth of info provided. I like the personal mentor idea mentioned in another thread, but the issue we've seen in the past (when we paired new players with a single mentor) is that new players greatly outnumber possible mentors. But making the mentee turns viewable would make that possible, though somewhat indirectly.

Thoughts? Is this something people would be interested in doing, and do you think it would be helpful?

882 days, 8 hours, 10 minutes ago

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

I didn't see the thread, but this sounds interesting to me, being a mentor would be too much of a burden given scarce time, but this sounds good. Would mentors see which questions are (being) addressed?

882 days, 6 hours, 39 minutes ago

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

I agree as well. I mentored a game and it did take a huge time investment, but I would be more than willing to look in on MVM games to give tips and feedback. Nice idea.

882 days, 5 hours, 37 minutes ago

olegboleg

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

hmm quick suggestion. while i had some initial doubts about the concept, i do see the benefits, too.

Within the current setup of planet.nu, would it be possible to auto-post the questions asked in the game to the activity feed for those players that optin into that mentorboard/feed?

then it wouldnt be mcuh different to asking questions in the feed, where we know its working great.

I have an alternative suggestion, too. How about this. Player can ask questions by opening a chat dialog. you see this on support sites alot. Players that OptIn as Mentor will get a popup when they are online, and can asnwer to that question.

2n alternative: a chatroom where mentee can go to ask questions to Mentors that are logged in.

-> both could be combined with the visibility to the games, of course.

note: i would gladly work as a mentor again, but my available time is currently incsonsitant, so i cant commint to a full game. So i welcome the chance to help on demand or as a Personal Mentor just for a single Player or two.

(sidenote: i am already doing such support on demand in my professional life for a Mobile Device management via the "directly" platform. which is offers a great user and experts expirience imho).

882 days, 5 hours, 32 minutes ago

olegboleg

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

(
oh and about my doubts on how i udnerstood your original community mentor concept:

as i understand it, it would mean that an active mentor would log into the various games and give proactive tips to various players.

This could lead to much more work - und unnessecary double efford - for the mentors and also maybe "spam" for the mentee as they get several tips at once from differnent mentors.
)

882 days, 4 hours, 36 minutes ago

qinic

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

I like the idea of opt in and opening the games up so it can be looked at by anyone who wants to assist. I also agree with @OlegBoleg that having this added to the feed for opted in members would be best. What might be even more helpful if there was an indication that someone is looking into it as there might be a delay between reviewing and crafting the answer and people might start to feel they are wasting their time if they spend a lot of time researching and find someone has replied in the meantime.

882 days, 4 hours, 22 minutes ago

emork the lizard king

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

Good idea.
Oleg's suggestion for a 1:1 chat between mentor and mentee would be great. Would avoid double work by the mentors. A mentee asks a question and the help request is shown as pending (however this is realized) until the first mentor takes it. Good thing to do when you have 15 minutes of spare time.

882 days, 4 hours, 20 minutes ago

talespin

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

I like it. I'd worry about how much email that would be. I sometimes miss private messages because there are so many messages going into my email.

882 days, 3 hours, 41 minutes ago

qinic

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

@Talespin Depending on your client you could make a rule to put planets.nu massages into a separate folder.

882 days, 3 hours, 13 minutes ago

talespin

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

I have an email completely dedicated to Nu, but there's a lot of messages! lol

882 days, 3 hours, 2 minutes ago

qinic

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

Ouch well in that case the rules will have to get more complex but is still doable.

882 days, 2 hours, 56 minutes ago

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

Good Idea!

882 days, 1 hours, 10 minutes ago

decius

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

I like the idea, especially since like @Olegboleg, my available time is inconsistent right now so I can't commit to a full game, but I would volunteer as a view-only mentor.

A few suggestions:

Rather than spam every mentor with every MvM game's posts, is there a way to randomly select (or round-robin) a handful of mentors and "assign" them to each MvM game? This would help with the flood of e-mails @Talespin is worried about and let the mentors focus on a few MvM games.

Applying a tag in the e-mail subject, e.g., "[MvM]" would help us set up e-mail rules to filter these messages.

882 days, 0 hours, 0 minutes ago

nerim

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

Most beginers Build the Wrong typs of Torps .
But if try to tel them that a Mark 1 or 2 Topedo is almost useless they dont understand .... Mark 4 or 7 or Max are best for me.
And the FC codes are hard for beginners like trg or lfm sips etc.
Also the Tax system is for a Beginner hard to understand nice Adons for that but a beginner wil not now.

Idea sound good maybe some of this importeand Basics in the game discription?

881 days, 23 hours, 29 minutes ago

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

@Talespin,

> I'd worry about how much email that would be

I've looked at the Public Activity for a few MvM games. Except for the posts by Big Beefer, there are relatively few messages. IMHO, this is a problem that needs to be addressed. Communications is one of the critical skills in this game. The best place to start teaching it is in the MvM games.

@Decius,

> randomly select (or round-robin) a handful of mentors and "assign" them to each MvM game?

That would require a lot more coding, but I think it would deliver a better result.

@Nerim,

There's a LOT of information that could be given to the Midshipmen in an MvM game. I believe that most of it could be done through expansion of the messages that are automatically generated, but some would work better as links to documentation (possibly new documentation).

Even with that expansion of the messages, there are still questions that are specific to the exact circumstances that will require a human to respond.

@Big+Beefer,

I think it would work better if the number of Community Mentors were kept to a relatively small number of players, and if each of those players had experience in several races.

It might also be a good idea to have the minimum rank for the Community Mentors be Captain or Commodore, instead of the Lieutenant Commander that's required for a Mentor player.

This looks to be the start of a "fine grain permissions" system. I've implemented these before and worked with several of them. If you're interested, I can work with you to review/implement/expand this.

881 days, 21 hours, 32 minutes ago

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

We could minimize the coding demand ... from a pool of Community Mentors two player show interest to the MvM game and they get all post from the public board as notify.

We need to ensure that whenever a new MvM game starts the pool of Mentors get a notify.

just my 2ct.

Count me in as Community Mentor :)

881 days, 21 hours, 7 minutes ago

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

Nice idea, count me in too!
I like the idea of a 'pool' of mentee-questions where mentors can adopt the question (@Oleg/@Emork). This way, answers are guaranteed 24/7. I'll have some time most days, but cannot commit as a full-time mentor.

881 days, 21 hours, 7 minutes ago

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

What you are aiming at, isn't that basically a Issue Tracking System (ITS)? A midshipman is asking a question, and a mentor "grabs" the question and answers it.

To avoide coding something like that from scratch again, you could try to integrate an open source version...

Also, I think the number of potential mentors is not that big, obviously you need to be having the proper rank in the midshipman's race to be considered having experience, you need to have opted in, and you need to be lurking (with one browser tab?) over the Mentor's Chat Tab...

I am suffering from the same thing called RL like most of you guys, but I should be able to answer questions every now and then.

At least for the Colonies.

- Cornrelius

881 days, 20 hours, 52 minutes ago

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

Maybe you could have a Mentor Interest section.

The game will not start unless you have one or Two Mentor Interest registered.

They get to see the game but don't play the game itself.

Stops lots of people answering the same question and those signed up know they need to answer the questions and if two mentors they can pass the question if they cannot answer quickly or don't know.

881 days, 19 hours, 59 minutes ago

mcnimble

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

Phrased in another way, there is no reason why a mentor should also play the game.

There is also the planetsnu.slack.com chat where several players are available to answer questions already. Although I can understand that that is not a NU-sanctioned place for midshipmen.

In any case, I'm interested in helping with less commitment than an entire MvM game.

881 days, 19 hours, 51 minutes ago

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

Answering their questions is not the main problem. Getting them to stick with the game and ask them is. I am currently trying to mentor a game and find myself and one other player still submitting turns regularly. And, he is not asking a single question. Did I err in offering advice before the questions? Seems a waste of my time to even try.

881 days, 18 hours, 53 minutes ago

nerim

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

How is it to Create a Main guide for all Races and put a Link to that Races so it wil spare much Space. (So we need only 1 Link like (Basic of the Game and Races etc) i be not good at that thinks :)
And dont describe evrytink there but the Basics of the Game.
Yes i now that all already exist but a newbe interest only the Basic and not much more and they dont now were to find it.
And big beefer Plan is also fine i think if they want go deeper in the Game.

jusme you can not run after the Players if they dont ask!!!!!!

881 days, 18 hours, 51 minutes ago

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

@Gnerphk did it for us already

http://www.planetsmagazine.com/category/strategy/master-class/

881 days, 18 hours, 45 minutes ago

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

And Dotman post short sequences on Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Gha0r6HLoQaYsfDlxBYYg

881 days, 18 hours, 14 minutes ago

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

> @Gnerphk did it for us already

He certainly did. He also created these guides that are useful in MvM games:

http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/g-first-turn
http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/g-second-turn
http://planets.nu/#/howtoplay/g-early-ships

In addition, @Dotman created this one:

https://nuhangar.wordpress.com/

881 days, 13 hours, 50 minutes ago

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

Come on guys, the solution is obvious!

Make it so Midshipman MvsM public Activity Feed posts go to their own Forum in the main Activity Feed.

Then make it so we can pick and choose which Forums we want to subscribe to, like I suggested last year; https://planets.uservoice.com/forums/136520-general/suggestions/17071177-require-subscribing-to-forums-to-see-them-in-mai

Then anyone that wants to answer Midshipman questions can choose to see them in the main Activity Feed... and I can un-subscribe from seeing promotions and new Sectors starting and focus on answering questions.

Then Big Beefer doesn't have to answer basic game play questions ever again.
_ _ _

Then just make it so anyone can view MvsM Sector positions as read-only.
___

I have used my alternate account to join MvsM's to investigate and help Midshipman many times, but there isn't always an Open position... and the recent change to require X amount of Turns to take a replacement position may have killed my ability to do that.

881 days, 13 hours, 33 minutes ago

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

Just echoing what some other people have already said. I do NOT want emails from 50 different sources daily, I have too much email already. Ideally I'd like to login to the website in my free time and have a convenient way to see what questions have been posted and not yet answered. What that looks like I don't care much.

Having said that, I REALLY wish we had a more standard community forum setup (like any other website since 2000 you weirdos!) instead of the news feed, and a real-time, in-game chat system. I know these aren't what this thread is about, but since these were mentioned I had to throw in my support for them. Communication at NU is like a redheaded step child in every way.

867 days, 7 hours, 1 minutes ago

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

This has been implemented in a fairly basic format, and is ready to test for those that want to try it out. There is now a checkbox on your edit profile page to include yourself as a community mentor. This will send you a notification whenever a new MvM game starts that does not have a human mentor. This generally only happens every 2-3 days, so in itself should not generate much additional email (and you can always turn it back off).

Once notified, you can go to the interest page for the game to express your interest as a mentor, subscribing yourself to the game's feed to receive questions. You can also see the other mentors signed up, so no need to do so if there are already several or there is someone you might have personality clashes with. You might also want to introduce yourself to the new players then.

From there, just offer advice and answer questions as you are able. You will have access to view (but not change) the mentees' turns, so you can get the details you need to give good answers. The auto-generated messages will still be sent out in these games.

To avoid the issue of multiple people looking into a question at once, for the time being I would recommend that before you investigate or answer a question, you first "Like" the relevant post, which can signal to the other mentors that you have taken it on.

We went this route primarily due to the ease of implementation, and can look into further improvements once we see how it goes. But it is also nice that it keeps some connection between mentees in a game and a small group of mentors, since those social connections also go a long way towards keeping players interested. And hopefully it will allow people to help out teaching our new players without the full commitment of playing in a MvM game. I like many of the other ideas here as well for things to look into in the future.

866 days, 15 hours, 32 minutes ago

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

I'm in. Will be happy to complain about the parts I dislike. lol ;)

866 days, 5 hours, 21 minutes ago

qinic

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

Signed up, got limited first hand experience with regards to races so if you see me signed up to a MVM game don't let that be a deterrent to sign up too :)

866 days, 5 hours, 13 minutes ago

qinic

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

@Big+Beefer is there a way to get to interest section on a game that is running?
I thought it might be a good idea to sign up for games already in progress.

861 days, 1 hours, 8 minutes ago

qinic

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

Hi @Big+Beefer
it might be a good idea to mention the community mentors in your opening automated activity message and that players can see who they are in the interest section.
Anyway was just a thought.
Cheers
Qinic

857 days, 7 hours, 31 minutes ago

qinic

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

Hi @Big+Beefer,
from a community Mentor perspective answering questions works very well with the interest signup and such. From my perspective it is also nice to see other mentors advise so you learn something as a mentor too.
How much it improves the MvM experience for the midshipmen I don't know, at least they get pretty quick responses so that is certainly an advantage.

With the current implementation I find it is pretty reactive, e.g. if questions are asked we answer them. However I think we could improve things by also provide pro-active advise. For this I think it would be great if we could see all games we have expressed interest in in the my games section so you can just click on the MvM games you signed up to and have a look how they are getting on and provide some input since not everyone asks questions.

Anyone else got any thoughts on that?

857 days, 4 hours, 20 minutes ago

the green knight

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

I second @Qinic's suggestion. It would be nice to see my interest picks.

856 days, 22 hours, 25 minutes ago

emork the lizard king

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

Generel feedback on the new feature: very good. easy to see new questions and which were not answered yet. most of the time it takes just 1-2 minutes to answer.

856 days, 16 hours, 52 minutes ago

mcnimble

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

Turns out I can look at all midshipmen slots of all MvM games. Is that intentional?

856 days, 16 hours, 25 minutes ago

qinic

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

Well I thought opening it up to view was what BB had meant in his opening post, however that stopped working for me in this sector http://planets.nu/#/sector/218297

856 days, 15 hours, 38 minutes ago

decius

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

@Qinic, As far as I can tell, that ability is disabled when there is a human mentor. I can still do it for the other sector I'm a mentor for: http://planets.nu/#/sector/218554

856 days, 15 hours, 33 minutes ago

qinic

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

@Decius that would certainly explain it but not sure that that needs to be the case e.g. maybe that should be changed so we can still assist and offer personalized advise as community mentors even if there is a human Mentor.

856 days, 12 hours, 42 minutes ago

decius

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

@Qinic While I generally agree with you, and as a mentor wouldn't mind others helping answer questions or providing a second opinion, I could also see how some mentors might want to be left alone and not under the scrutiny of other people. Basically, I can understand why it's this way, even if it might not be ideal in all cases.

856 days, 12 hours, 21 minutes ago

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

what if you had a challenge system for after the mentor map the mentors carry their teams on maps against other mentors teams, an the winners mentor gets a prize lol

856 days, 12 hours, 19 minutes ago

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

little peice a purple cloth

856 days, 7 hours, 37 minutes ago

qinic

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

@Decius while I don't know how many of them would mind I think it than could be optional just ask the mentor if he minds. E.g. When a mentor signs up have a tick box, "Allow community Mentors to view Game details" and than allow Mentor view according or disallow it as the case may be.
Certainly doesn't seem like a horrendous coding effort to me.

856 days, 6 hours, 30 minutes ago

emork the lizard king

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

@Decius: If a game has a human Mentor who wants to give a consistent teaching in his own pace he can just write a message in the public board. Then the other mentoring commanders can remove their interest and don't get any more questions from this game. I assume that mentoring commanders are people of good will and this will work well.

584 days, 5 hours, 33 minutes ago

qinic

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

Thread resurrection

There is a hand full of us who have fairly religiously signed up interest for AI led MVM games to help react to questions. I have no idea if that helped player retention or not but just wanted to resurrect this thread to make players aware that this "Community Mentoring" exists just in case they like to help out to.
And so that you don't need to read all of this thread you can sign up to get informed of MvM games needing a mentor you need to:
Click on Edit Profile next to your profile picture
Click the tick box that says "I want to be a community mentor"
Make sure email notifications are enabled
Than just sign interest on MvM games when you get an email about a new one.
You will than be able to get emails every time someone ask a public question in an MvM game you signed up to
And be able to view the game turn details form any of the players or the AI position in case your advise needs some in game research

As much as I gave advise I also learned something from doing this as a) I see the advise of other mentors and b) every so often I have to look into the documentation to answer a question

584 days, 4 hours, 8 minutes ago

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

to reward mentors , whisperer is creating a short game with a prize , the sole entry requirement is that you must have mentored , the idea is to bring in more mentors when they see its a yearly thing or every 2 yr thing whatever ,an that the only way to gain entrance an try for this prize is to have been a mentor , is this a good idea? would it help gain volunteers to mentor ?

584 days, 0 hours, 6 minutes ago

qinic

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

Hi @Ghostrider, I can only speak for myself a Mentor only game is certainly intriguing and might be an incentive. I think what might help is talking about mentoring, e.g. keep it on the minds of veterans and experienced players to consider as a game. I will probably try mentoring after one of my current game ended. Maybe people feel it is too much of a commitment. In your experience how does the workload compare to a 'normal' game?

583 days, 22 hours, 59 minutes ago

RE: With respect to the recent feed items on the Mentoring...

Qinic, workload, heavey for me cause typing is quiet painful an you need to type to talk, but Im planning to do 1 every so often an im still debating the time spread
but im very certain , it will improve our chances of being able to stay around playing this for a lot longer, new techs which our new players use will make it easier, ie I was able to cut an copy sections of G's documentation section whenever needed with their permission , this made explaining things a lot easier..
to the basic question timeload probably double a normal game, but some of that comes from this, an its good for the mentor , we do all these things , an some weve done so long we dont know why, till you got to try to explain it to others , an that in itself forces an introspective look at what we do each personally from start to finish, which is worthwhile for the mentor
also if I have a new species I wish to open for here at nu the best place to do that is by playing that race as a mentor, if ive played it before in other places.. what that allows for is the accumulation of all those little time based steps towards ranks,that situational real combat doesnt always allow for an sometimes play style prevents
mentoring is our best hope for continuation of play,the dam will break when some tech genius figures how to make translation intergame user funtional an friendly ,45% of the mentees will speak a different language an the ones where translation has failed will more than likely have trouble an be more likely to drop when that is solved itll be on
to the basic question workload double but thats based some on your tech skill, but its a short time frame 3.5 months maybe less, I told the mentees it was my vacation off the wasp battlefront , have fun with it, if ya do it
I fill its a way we can help solidify our chance of playing in the future, the (mentors game) will be short an sweet mainly cause we dont want to take up the time of mentors wish I could carve fast enough to carve something for each mentor that mentors, but things as they are , best I could do is carve a prize an have the game every so often
whisperer is making a map