100 DAYS OF STEEM : Day 10 - A Steem Mentoring System
Steem can be a difficult place to get started on.
Newcomers to the platform can easily be confused by the technicalities of multiple keys, upvoting and downvoting, powering up and powering down, witnesses and proxies...
These complexities often lead to people giving up and leaving after only one or two posts.
This is clearly not ideal. Increasing Steem’s very low retention rate is a key priority.
Improving the onboarding experience from the technical side is already being worked on.
Alongside this one idea is to introduce some form of Steem Mentoring system.
A Steem Mentoring System
Some games have mentoring systems where new players are paired up with more experienced players who guide them through their first few weeks while they get to ‘know the ropes’.
These schemes usually operate on a voluntary basis but commonly the mentor, and often the mentee as well, get some sort of reward when the new player has reached a certain experience level or completed a certain number of tasks.
Could some scheme like this work on Steem?
Existing communities already play an important role in welcoming, and nurturing, newcomers to the platform. But not every newcomer finds a community in time.
In the short term at least there are unlikely to be the resources to build a system with any formal coded structures. So any scheme will need to be manually constructed, operated, and monitored.
At a very basic level, maybe something like this…
Experienced Steemians, with say over 6 months active on the platform and reputation of at least 55, volunteer to be Mentors. Their account names, languages, and timezone are logged on a weekly updated Mentors page. Each mentor also has their own regularly updated Mentor’s Welcome Page linked to from the main Mentors page.
Newcomers to Steem are given a link to the main Mentors page. If they are interested in having a Mentor to help them get established on Steem they select a mentor from the list that matches their language and timezone. They can then link through to the Mentors personal page.
Having read the Mentor’s page if the newcomer wants to pursue the mentoring then they make contact with the Mentor via their details on the page, or possibly by leaving their contact details in a comment.
At this stage the most likely contact route will be via Discord or perhaps Telegram. The initial introductory contact message to the Newcomer from Steemit will need to have included details of how to get on Discord or Telegram.
After making contact if the Newcomer and Mentor decide to go forward with the mentoring arrangement then they begin to work through a series of guided tasks that might include writing and formatting posts, using tags, making comments, joining communities, powering up, voting for witnesses etc etc.
To enable monitoring and to register for mentoring rewards then both newcomer and mentor would need to make initial ‘Mentoring Announcement Posts’. Then as they progress through the various tasks, they would, at a number of key points, make mutual ‘Mentoring Progress Posts’. Assuming appropriate progress is being made these posts would be rewarded with upvotes from a Steemit mentoring account.
Ideally the mentoring arrangement would last a minimum of 3 months. This is often said to be the ‘establishment period’. If newcomers make it through this period they are likely to stay on Steem. At the end of 3 months the newcomer and mentor would then make their final mutual ‘Mentoring Completion Post’. If it has all worked out and both are still active on Steem then both posts would be rewarded with Steemit upvotes.
Would this work?
Is this sort of system workable? Is it too complex? Is it scalable? Is it scam-proof enough? Does it have any personal safety risks?
Would it help retention?
Has anyone got any better ideas?
Or should we just rely on Discord based communities as before?
This sort of mentoring system is certainly not the perfect answer to the retention issue.
It may not be very scalable - but we are not, in the near future at least, dealing with very large numbers.
It may be too scamable - but with careful monitoring it should have sufficient resilience to prevent fraudulent usage.
Some sort of coded, automated system would certainly be bigger and better but that would have to wait its turn for development resources to become available.
This system could be implemented now.
Is it worth giving it a try?
Would anyone be interested in being a volunteer mentor?
We welcome your thoughts, feedback and suggestions.
Thank you,
The Steemit Team
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT
On Monday at 7pm PST / 11am KST / 2am UTC Green House Radio Online is hosting a Steem Witness Forum on their Discord server.
This is a community organised forum but we hope as many witnesses as possible, and as many of the community as possible, will be able to attend…
Thank you @greenhouseradio for putting on this forum.
Once again it is a confirmation of the popularity of Steem, when shortly after your posting the number of comments shooting up and it is clearly visible who is waiting for every single post, both constructive comments and just spamming but this is a live there will be always pro and contra. Important thing we should not let the people who want to rebuild Steem and Steemit to be distracted by negativity and just ignore them.
As to mentoring it is a great idea and reading through the comments bellow we can see that many people already doing that. When newcomers post their first post should receive a “welcome” comment that would offer to visit mentoring post or page. The mentoring page should contain basic info and offering different types or fields such as game, travel, photography, writing, art, homesteading…
Each section then should include those volunteers who would like to be mentors and who the people can reach in discord, there should be discord page too.
Issuing posts throughout the process of establishment with appropriate rewards for both parties is great idea too, will help newbees to be visible and reward mentors for their work and time.
In general it is time consuming if someone want to do a good job that is why the selection of mentors should be really strict if you want it to work properly.
Very well said.
Thank you for your support for the idea, and the extra ideas.
We are going to keep refining and develop the project.
The Steemit Team
I am 100 percent on board with this. A mentorship program could very easily be used along side Discord. Our discord communities are quite established with users that have been on the Steem Blockchain for more than 1 year so it would continue to benefit us.
There are many unwritten rules along with the markdown language for posts and many keys available to users. Mentorship would help new users navigate the many facets of Steem and write beautiful and meaningful content.
Great Idea!
Sign me up as a mentor!
We would love your support as witness. Vote for Hashkings as witness here
Discord is chaotic, messy to many and you need a good internet connection to join. All things I struggle with and I am not the only one plus Discord has nothing to do with Steem.
Seen it should have an easy to understand manual and users should be more helpful.
Most do not care and do not answer. After one year I could still not figure out how to buy and sell Steem in an easy way. No one explained it and what is possible in one country is not possible in an other country.
Thank you for your support on this.
More news coming soon.
The Steemit Team
Hello @SteemitBlog and Steemit Team!! The issue in this article is extremely important, mostly for people that is new not only to the platform but to blockchain technology in general. Definitely the operation in this platform is much different from traditional ones.
Recently when you launched the Community Curators initiative I presented a project which is in tune with the subject in this post.
PROYECT KNITRIAS started two weeks ago, and now I've launched the official announcement for candidates. I want to support 10 little and new accounts with a delegation of 200 SP from my funds. The goal is work in group to reach the minnow level while posting, commenting and creating upvote and power up strategies.
I want to present you the post with the announcement for the project so it can be considered by your Team for any input, difusion or posible support.
Thanks for you attention and best wishes for every project!!
KNITRIAS PROJECT: ANNOUNCEMENT | PROYECTO KNITRIAS: CONVOCATORIA [ENG-ESP]
Very interesting project. Thank you for organizing this.
For a long time now I have been looking after members who I recruited from Facebook in my groups there, for example. For this purpose, I have always led 10 people to a Facebook group and created a new account for them there and also delegated SP from our curator account. Then I explained step by step how to make the first steps out of Steem. From creating the blog to writing the first article. This is of course very time consuming but I like to do it.
If you then find your way a little bit, I invite you to our Discord. There they are looked after by the community.
I have also written special articles to help newbies find their way around Steem and I will continue to do so. Here for example how to set up your blog or how to format your posts correctly, you can request this help by command in our Discord at any time and from any member:
Example how to set up your account:
https://hackmd.io/@ljwYHdJZSNOdqmQgVoZTeA/S1HFvBUxB
Example how to format posts:
https://steemit.com/deutsch/@greece-lover/formatierungen-von-beitraegen-leicht-gemacht-hier-meine-kleine-gedankenstuetze
In the last 2 weeks I have brought 10 new members to Steem, 4 of them are very active in the german speaking community !
In order to recruit new members, to care for them and above all to provide new accounts with an appropriate delegation, country communities should get a fixed delegation. So you can claim new accounts, provide them with SP and above all get them for their contributions in the beginning. Even if the first comments are not that great, they have to be motivated by receiving rewards.
I will gladly take over the area for the admission and promotion of German speaking members. Together with our team of curators we are up to the task. As I have 180.000 members in my Facebook groups I can also promote Steem from time to time.
We also bind our members and organize virtual meeting places from time to time. On sunday I always organize "The Inn" on Steem. Here you can talk about everything and publish your favourite music.
Here the link to yesterday's event. Also here it would be nice if we could use an account from Steemit inc. to reward the "guests" for good comments and contributions during the event. How to bind members ! Also such a contribution should get a high vote before the event that it appears in Trending. But we do not have the means.
https://steemit.com/deutsch/@das-wirtshaus/2-oster-stammtisch-im-wirtshaus-sonntag-der-19-04-ab-19-uhr-hier-unter-diesen-beitrag
Some very good ideas there, thank you. We are looking how these sorts of ideas can be utilized and expanded.
Not sure if you have already done it, but it could be interesting if you put out every week or so a post introducing the new members who have just joined your community.
The Steemit Team
Mentoring new users can be good, but should not be seen as a long-term solution, because the more users there are, the more mentors you will need to cover the masses, which is obviously impossible, as you whether or not you were using a paid model. Additionally, you can be sure that many people would not appreciate spending months just learning to use a platform or understand the mechanics of the Steem Blockchain.
Regarding "Steemit.com", I think the focus should be more on improving the user experience and user-friendliness of the UI, in addition to working on appropriate documentation for as many languages as possible. Of course, everything mentioned above should be associated with other missing areas such as the ease of registration. Basically, even a 6-year-old kid should be able to use Steemit without having to dig deeper to understand everything.
To end with, there is also a key point that needs more care. Since you are mentioning Steem as a whole, having an appealing ecosystem for entrepreneurs, investors, game designers ... will definitely play a major role in attracting more users to the chain. Different projects will have different approaches. If one project puts a high value on human interactions, another project might not need people to even register and use the chain as a database for articles for example. There are plenty of ways of how people can use the chain to build their projects. Thus, putting too much effort into onboarding while completely ignoring the usability of the chain (Steem as a utility token) as a factor for attraction will definitely slow the growth of the ecosystem as a whole.
Thank you for having such discussions with the community. There are a lot of good ideas and the community is full of talented people that are ready to help. They just need a way to voice their ideas.
Thank you for this - some very useful and valid points.
We are currently working on a number of the items you mention.
Making the Steem blockchain attractive to all types of user and developer will be very important.
The Steemit Team
The KR community has had multiple initiatives that incorporate a lot of the topics covered here. The details need to be ironed out but i think its heading in the right direction. Please talk to triple-A witnesses.
Thank you. What is the best way to contact the Triple-A witnesses?
These are the important points that I consider to take into account:
- Mentors Page : Classified by language, time zone, area of expertise and contact form.
- Task plan : it is a plan implemented by each mentor to verify the progress of the new user during their first three months; this point is very important to avoid wasting the mentor's time
- Incentive system : A mechanism must be created through which the mentor authorizes a certain number of votes for the publications of the student as a reward for their progress and comply with the assigned recommendations
Consider that these points are the most important to be taken into account, the same Discord allows users to be classified according to their progress through roles, hold online meetings for each role separately, has its own security systems to filter the who do not meet the requirements to enter the tutoring plan, etc.DISCORD
Siempre has sido nuestro guía @acostaeladio y me encanta la idea de tu postulacion
Some very good points and ideas.
Thank you
The Steemit Team
Things can be quite confusing when you start, historically new users have unintentionally upset existing users who used to flag them off the platform :(
Giving new users an opportunity to ask " some dumb questions " of experienced users would benefit the block-chain going forward :)
We are going to keep developing the idea.
Thank you
Just a reminder to anyone new or old who needs help, minnowsupport/PAL has moved on-chain activity to hive but we are always willing to answer questions about either steem or hive, this is a never expiring link to our discord: http://minnowpond.org/
Moved on-chain activity to HiveDefinitely not a good idea. The people in control of minnowsupport/PAL are not in support of Steem anymore. I would advise anyone against going to the server. You can not use minnowsupport/PAL to influence people and spread FUD anymore now. Just leave the community to projects and people who are 100% for Steem.
I will not support what is currently happening with steem that is true, but if a steem user needs help with keys or any other info about steem I will happily help them, I only want the best for the users.
Then move on to Hive and stop using the platform to recruit the crowd for the pal server. Even if your attentions are honest, there is no guarantee that the owners of PAL (former witnesses) will not use "community monopolization" again to exercise a bad influence on the Steem community as they did in the past.
I think it would be better to produce a web page load of step by step video tutorials for the new users, tips, general info, and more.
agree with this, then the mentor only for guide when they couldn't solve the issues they face from the tutorials firsthand.
yes, it has to be simple and quick for everyone to find the info.
That would be useful too.
@steemitblog @steemcurator01 Please, check what was the project Utopian.io something like this has to come back... this way we can build together all that the blockchain need.