Talk:Growth/FAQ

Third-party pausing in mentorship?

Hi. On en.wp, I follow the User talk of a mentor who has been inactive for about three weeks, and not particularly active for around a month. There are currently four mentorship module questions on her talk page, one of which I chose to answer myself after giving the inactive mentor a few days to respond.

Is there any way a mentor can be put on pause by a third party? Folly Mox (talk) 19:38, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

@Folly Mox: Yes. Any admin can go to Special:ManageMentors and remove mentors or mark them as away. I vaguely recall that there is some code somewhere to automatically mark inactive mentors as away, but I'm not sure what it's threshold is or whether it worked.

You should probably have posted this on a more visible talk page, since this page previously didn't exist and doesn't have that many watchers. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 19:52, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

I did see it had previously been deleted for spam, but figured the Growth Team might see it anyway. Also regularly forget about Template:pb at mw 🙃

Do you think you might be able to handle the marking inactive bit, mw:User:Pppery? I know you're a local en.wp admin as well and I'm not sure where to request it. The mentor in question is en:User:ARoseWolf. I'm hoping she returns to activity soon, but it feels inconsiderate to her mentees if we just leave them waiting and hoping. Folly Mox (talk) 20:47, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

@Folly Mox: Thank you for noticing and responding to the unanswered questions! Pppery is correct, any admin can remove that Mentor or update that Mentor to "away". Some wikis have bots that remove inactive mentors, but the Growth team is also considering if we should build that functionality into the Mentorship features as default. If we did that, we would allow Admins to configure what threshold needs to be met to be considered inactive. Here's the associated task: T321509. Would that be helpful? Thanks, KStoller-WMF (talk) 20:54, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

I think having locally configurable settings that will automatically move mentors to "away" would be helpful, yes. I worry particularly about the new user experience in this case because talk page culture is so weird. I know not to expect a response the same hour or day, and consider a "prompt" talkpage response to be in the neighbourhood of a week or less, but from the number of times I've seen newer users make single line posts in the vein of "uh, hello??" at a helpdesk venue after their previous message goes unaddressed for twenty or thirty minutes, I get the feeling that some people think it's more like SMS.

Some sort of messaging towards newcomers about talk page engagement expectations might also be helpful (this may very well already be present somewhere), but even given the above, I would like to hold mentors to a slightly higher standard, which I can easily support due to having not signed up as a mentor myself. Folly Mox (talk) 21:20, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

_{(edit conflict)} I'd recommend asking at w:Wikipedia talk:Growth Team features or w:Wikipedia talk:Growth Team features/Mentor list - if the English Wikipedia community had come up with some standard procedure to follow for cases like this I'd be willing to implement it, but I don't want to break new ground when admin edits to others' mentor settings have only happened three times before - once when a mentor was blocked as a sock, once when they explicitly retired, and once when they were inactive for a far longer period than three weeks - and in all of those cases they were removed from the list not marked as "Away". I finally figured out what my recollection above was referring to: phab:T321509, which is still in the pipeline and not done. * Pppery * _{it has begun} 20:57, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you; I'll ask there. For clarity, ARoseWolf is 💯 a good faith editor, and a kind and beautiful soul. One reason I've been hesitant to answer questions on her behalf is not that I don't know the answer, but that the kindness I could show in answering would not equal what she'd be able to bring to the table. I miss her song in these halls. Folly Mox (talk) 21:23, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

@Folly Mox, a possibility is to answer the question on the away mentor talk page, and then claim the mentee. It is made easier if mentors watch other mentors' talk pages, just in case; it can be defined as a best practice.

I'm reposting what I wrote on the conversation at English Wikipedia: it seems that a practical solution is set by a few communities: having some admins checking the list, pausing away mentors, then notifying them. If they are back, they can end the pause. If they are still inactive after the break, they are removed. The idea is to quickly react, so that newcomers won't be left alone. The Growth team can suggest it as a best practice on their documentation.

We can imagine a solution that automatically stops assigning a mentor's name to new accounts, based on a set of definitions. However, it would not cover the case of newcomers who ask a question a few days after joining.

Trizek (WMF) (talk) 12:19, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

I agree that does sound like best practice, and autopausing away mentors will only ever be a partial solution (even if en.wp adopts such a policy, I doubt there would be much appetite for pausing mentors more quickly than a week or two, which is already kind of a long time to wait if you've just signed up to a new website and are looking for personalised help; in addition to the case you mention of mentees who don't ask questions right away). For clarity, I'm not signed up as a mentor; I answered some unanswered questions as best I could, but I don't have the capacity to claim mentees stuck on hold, and don't assess my own policy knowledge, patience, and clarity and concision of communication as adequate for the mentor role. Folly Mox (talk) 12:53, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

We both agree on the fact that one week is a long time, when you are a newcomer expecting an answer. Setting a mentor as away automatically would partially help, but I think a list of unanswered questions would be a good complement. It is something that can be built locally, using a bot.

Do you know that you can be a mentor, but with no random new accounts getting your name? In this case, you can select which mentees you want to mentor. At Special:MentorDashboard, use the menu "Number of mentees assigned to me" to set your account as "None (I claim them manually)".

And thank you for sharing your ideas regarding newcomers!

Trizek (WMF) (talk) 13:48, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Although I wasn't aware of the English Wikipedia Teahouse in its very early days, I believe there was a bot which used to determine whether a Teahouse Host had edited within a certain timeframe and marked them as 'Away'. I believe WritKeeper also created a script which detected when a Host had logged on and which then sent them a reminder of their "maitre 'd" duties ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse/Host_lounge/Maitre_d link). That makes me wonder whether Mentors could be asked to install something similar, even to the point that questions are only sent to those Mentors who are currently logged on to their accounts, and are redirected to another person if they are not? It wouldn't be quite such a personal service, but it would certainly be much better for the questioner to get a pretty immediate response. Nick Moyes (talk) 15:38, 30 August 2023 (UTC)