Create a Mentor Advisory Tag for Easy Guidance and Cautionary Advice

[sylas]

I think it would be really useful to have a special tag made available for use by mentors only when giving advice in their capacity as mentors. The effect of the tag should be to put the text in a new box, indented left and right, with a border and a slightly different color background.

Using the "code" tag to give an approximation, it would would look a bit like this, but with a normal font and with "Mentor advisory notice" instead of "Code" as the label. It might be handy to let such notices be given a time of entry automatically as well.

Mentor advisory...

It would be expected that only mentors should use the tag. That could be enforced by software, or if that is too hard then simply by mentors correcting any improper usage by others.

Advisories could be easily added into an existing post, requesting (for example) no followup on an off topic remark, or advising of a deletion, or advising of a thread move, or anything else.

I think this could really help make more clear some of the guidance being supplied, and in some cases could work as an alternative to making edits of someone's post; just to give a caution or advice for future reference if the problem is sufficiently minor to mean an immediate edit is not necessary.

I'm basing this suggestion on remarks I made in [post=2486680]msg #2[/post] of the thread "Why can posts be deleted from threads at the will of a single Moderator?" I think it is worth its own suggestion thread.

Cheers -- sylas

 

[Wallace]

I think for the most part I've seen mentor's explain their 'mentoring' actions sufficiently when they have been used. I guess inhabiting the cosmo part of the forum means I don't see some of the more controversial threads, but from my experience in the cosmo/astro forum, mentors do a good job of explaining why certain action were taken, and it's clear when they have the 'mentor' hat on as opposed to when they are simply participating in the discussion in the same way as anyone else.

It might be different elsewhere though.

 

[Redbelly98]

When I've had to interject in a thread, I have prefaced it with "Moderator's note:" or something to that effect.

 

[sylas]

When I've had to interject in a thread, I have prefaced it with "Moderator's note:" or something to that effect.

That works. I just thought it might help to let them stand out a bit better. Sometimes a note like that gets missed. If it is a lot of work then it probably isn't worth it. I don't actually know the details of your software, but I suspect it would be pretty easy; in which case it could be useful.

Cheers -- sylas

 

[Redbelly98]

Greg and chroot, as Administrators, would be familiar with the software. Mentors, as a rule, do not have that level of access.

 

[sylas]

Greg and chroot, as Administrators, would be familiar with the software. Mentors, as a rule, do not have that level of access.

Of course. I was thinking of it as a tool mentors and users might find useful, and which Greg might or chroot might consider implementing, if it was easy to do and if mentors thought it might help.