New Project - WikiTree MENTORS

Question

 This is the official announcement of our new project.  

Mentors are Wiki Genealogists who help and interact with new members in our community.

Once a new member is greeted and has joined WikiTree, sometimes in the past they have found themselves lost and unsure.  Our objective is to help those members find their feet and become comfortable working here.

In the process, we are examining existing Help files, utilising the blog, and making ourselves available to field personal queries for assistance.

Hopefully we can take some of the pressure off existing projects which are impacted by inadvertent mistakes made by newcomers.

If anyone is interested in joining us, our project page can be found here:

Mentors Project Page

This is likely to be an active project with a greater time commitment than some other projects so please read the project page carefully before committing.  

If you are interested in joining or simply have ideas for us to implement, we would love to hear from you.

Comments

Here's a collection of suggestion from Tech Help ( http://www.wikitree.com/g2g/47821/how-does-wikitree-educate-our-members )

with reference to the You Tube tutorials about Wikitree.

WikiTree videos (Tutorials) on You Tube. I'm not sure this is the complete list of tutorial, but it's a start perhaps the links could be added to the help index menu in a category of video tutorials. I've added them to the mentors page, hope that was OK.

 

WikiTree - Creating and Editing a Profile
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuZXI6rGGb8

Wikitree.com (online Family Tree) introduction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFFv2jhzXxA

Wikitree, Merging profiles. A basic tutorial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Waad3pFg74

Adding and deleting photos on a WikiTree profile page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWAkQLkVAQc

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Thank you, Billy.  This is the sort of thing we are incorporating.  We will use all the existing resources, hopefully add a few more, and hopefully lead new members can to them.

We are doing a lot of brainstorming at present.  I'll rewatch all these videos now.   Thank you for adding them.

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There is a total of 7 videos I have them saved on my pc if they are needed to be uploaded to Google+

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The Mentor project is a wonderful initiative. I'm so thrilled that Irene is leading this. I think it's going to be great for the community. Thank you, Irene!

Answer 1

I think it is usefull to incorporate the greeters as a part of this project.

Comments

Yes, definitely.  We are working with Debby and the Greeters on this one.

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The Greeters: Overworked and underpaid! They are spread pretty thin and need more to help!. In fact I will post a G2G message to that affect.  Just saying that we should be careful about adding to their huge workload.  I know that those hard workers would never resist an opportunity to help more than they already do. They are an amazing bunch of men and women who dedicate so much time and sacrifice so much for WikiTree so I am sure they would be glad to help, but I will be bold and say that we should do something to recruit more Greeters if we increase their workload!

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Het is niet mijn bedoeling de Groeters zwaarder te belasten, maar juist te ontlasten.Door de integratie met dit mentorproject kan er een werkverdeling plaatsvinden tussen het vervolgcircuit en het het beginstadium. Nu al geven Groeters vervolg begeleiding, dat kan dan worden overgenomen door de nieuwe vrijwilligers van dit project. Door Groeters hier te integreren wordt voorkomen dat contacten dubbel geschieden.

It is not my intention to give the Greeters more work, but rather less work. By integration with this Mentors project the work can be divided. Already now Greeters are giving guidance after the first communication, which can then be taken over by the new volunteers of this project. By integrating Greeters and Mentors in one project double contacts will be prevented!​.

 

 

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Yes, this is it.  The Mentor group will handle the more complicated new member issues.  Most of the Mentor group are or have been Greeters so we do understand the Greeter load very well.  Greeters also experience new members who need more assistance than they have time to provide.  This will now be a Mentors job, to provide one-on-one where needed, also to look at how WikiTree procedures can be best explained.  

Some new users have no computer experience whatsoever and don't understand online forums, help indexes etc.  Some don't understand the wikitree concept of a shared tree.  There are many many issues which emerge at that entry point.

The idea is to take some of the load off the overworked Greeters, and find ways to improve the experience and capability of new Wikitreers.