Mentoring
From DPCanadaWiki
This page is primarily about the mentoring done via Beginners Only/Mentors Only projects, but Newcomers Only/Proof-only Mentoring projects are briefly discussed as well.
Why would I want to Mentor?
Well, you'd be helping new proofers get a start at DPC, by telling them what they're doing right and what they're doing wrong and whatever else you think is necessary information for new proofers. You do this by sending them feedback via a Private Message. Mentoring does take a lot of time and effort, but it's worth it for the responses you receive from happy new proofers.
Also, offering to be a mentor does not involve any sort of commitment! If you try it and decide you don't like it or don't have time, there's no obligation to ever do any ever again.
When can I start Mentoring?
When you are comfortable with the Guidelines, and have qualified for P2 access and are comfortable working in that round, send a PM or EMAIL to Simple Simon or coachmike asking to be granted mentor status. They will respond and then you are free to dive in to the MENTOR projects!
If you'd like to mentor in a group, check out the Grentoring page.
If you're worried that your proofing isn't good enough to be a mentor, ask dp-feedback for feedback on some of your recent P2 pages, or, do a few pages in a P3 Qual project and check your own diffs. If you haven't taken the proofing quiz recently, that can be a useful reminder of areas of the guidelines that you may have forgotten. Your proofing doesn't have to be perfect in P2 to be a mentor, you just need to be reasonably comfortable with guidelines and able to spot things that a newbie might have missed. Remember that all BEGIN projects go through P3 so you'll never be the last set of proofing eyes on a page.
If you're worried that your feedback isn't appropriate (too long, too short, too critical), then you can have your feedback reviewed before you send it. Just send a PM to Simple Simon with your feedback and details of the proofer and project and he'll send you any comments or suggestions that he has.
What tools/resources are available to help Mentors?
There is a Mentors page which details the Round 1 proofers, the mentorees. This page is extremely useful for deciding when to send feedback to a new proofer as it lists which proofers have proofed which page in each Mentor project available in Round 2.
Many of the existing Mentors have template files for feedback which they have developed to make the process of Mentoring more efficient. If you intend to mentor you may want to build your own template to reflect your own style, or contact one of the existing mentors who are willing to share their template with you.
Grentoring may also help you out if you're interested in sharing the mentoring experience with others.
This Show differences page will provide you with differences between P1 and P2 suitable for cutting and pasting.
There will soon be a new-mentor-mentoring service available if you would like someone to check over your feedback before you send it. Just send a PM to Simple Simon with the feedback and details of the proofer and project and he'll send you any comments or suggestions before you send it to the newbie.
What should I put in Feedback messages?
This is really up to you, but here are some suggestions:
- A subject line of "Mentor Feedback - Project Name" to jog the new proofers memory.
- Welcome the new proofer to DPC
- Tell the new proofers what they proofed correctly as well as their mistakes. Its very important to be clear with this information as well as being encouraging. We want these new proofers to stay around & help, not get discouraged by a harsh feedback message.
- Provide examples of the mistakes showing before & after text e.g. & include links to the covered guideline.
Please treat em-dashes in the same way as hyphens. i.e. "clothe them if they are naked" at the beginning and end of a line. & Proof them as two hyphens.of them out -- for a time?"--the kind-- of thing which everyoneproofed as:
of them out--for a time?"--the kind--of thing which everyonePlease see the Guidelines for more information on em-dashes.
- Provide some advice on whether the proofer should move on to EASY projects or do a few more BEGINNERS pages. This decision rests on how many pages you have mentored for a particular proofer, what types of corrections needed made to the OCR text on those pages and how well they were tackled.
- Point the new proofers to the Wiki pages Checking your diffs, Accessing older pages in a project, DPC Jargon Guide, etc.
- Point the new proofers to the DPC Forums, Guideline Summary & FAQs.
- Point the new proofers to the DPCustomMono2 font at DPCustomMono
- Encourage them to try the proofreading tutorial/quiz for practice with many common proofing issues.
- Ask the new proofers for feedback. When DPCWiki started mentoring, they ended by saying "I'm as new to mentoring as you are to proofing. Please let me know how I'm doing." Over time this has changed to a request for feedback on feedback.
How do I mentor?
- Grab a large coffee/beverage of your choice. Mentoring takes time!
- Then it's as simple as proofing a MENTOR project and opening a new Private Message window for each new proofer you find as you proof. As you proof the pages in the project, you can cut'n'paste example text and reminders to yourself as to what to say in the feedback message. Other Mentors find it easier to concentrate on proofing first, then compose their feedback while going over their Diff's.
- It may be useful to have the guidelines open in another browser window. Click on the relevant section for each issue you are explaining, then copy-paste the url from the address bar (for example: "http://www.pgdp.net/c/faq/proofreading_guidelines.php#eol_hyphen"), and link to it in your message. You may also want to copy & paste a line or two from the text of the relevant section in [quote].
- Checking the Mentors page will help you to decide when its appropriate to close off feedback for a particular new proofer and send them the Private Message you have constructed for them. Some mentors only like to proof 5 pages for any new proofer so the new proofers receive a variety of feedback messages. The system will give you all of the next available proofer's pages in a row whether the pages they worked on were consecutive or not.
- In order to ensure that you get all the pages you want to Mentor for a certain new proofer, please collect all of them first in your "In Progress" pages. This is easily done by simply refreshing the page after you have started proofreading; it automatically saves the page (without any changes you make, so do it before starting to proofread) as "In Progress" and loads the next available page. You can see the nickname of the previous proofer and the page number at the bottom of the page. Then you pick up the pages one at a time from the "In Progress" list and proofread them.
- This makes the Mentoring process much more efficient, since it ensures that every new proofer gets all of his pages (or a big enough portion of it) mentored by the same person. Most of the errors a new proofer makes repeat themselves over pages, and can be summarized better in a single feedback message.
How long will it take me?
It depends. It will take longer than normal P2 proofing.
Some people report averaging 40 minutes per message. Some have a style that allows them to do several in that time. Both have advantages and which you choose, which you develop, is up to you.
Your first two or three mentor messages may take quite a while as you sift through ideas for possible things to include and figure out what you want to write. After you've established your style, your approach, it does go more quickly. How much more is typically dependent on how much you customize each message.
For example, if you are mentoring several people in one project, you only have to build the url/link to "Just My Pages" once because you can copy/paste the link into each message for that project. And, for the next project, you only have to change the project ID part of the url to be able to include the "Just My Pages" link. Much faster than the first time!
Mentoring at DPC can be enjoyable and rewarding, although like all things, it's not for everyone. If you're finding it a chore, maybe a different approach will help.
Where can I get more help?
Post any questions to the Mentoring Forum.
There will soon be a new-mentor-mentoring service available if you would like someone to check over your feedback before you send it. Just send a PM to Simple Simon with the feedback and details of the proofer and project and he'll send you any comments or suggestions before you send it to the newbie.
I want to help, but I hate sending feedback.
Partner Mentoring
If you can't face sending feedback, you might be able to find a Mentoring Partner. Advertise in the Mentoring Forum saying that you want someone to send feedback for you. When someone responds, here is a system that has worked for others: a P2 proofer proofs the pages for a P1 proofer. She sends a pm/email to her feedback partner with the following information:
- Proofer's nick (you can send a link to the proofer's pm box from the bottom of your proofing interface.)
- Name of project (make sure to include Part 1, 2, 36) Once again a link to the project page is helpful.
- A link to your first diff page. The feedbacker can then change the png number in the URL to find the next page the proofer worked on. You can look at P1's diffs by changing the last number in the link to a 1 instead of a 2.
- Which pages were done by that proofer.
That's it. You, of course, will find what works best for you and your partner. Enjoy!
Proof-only Mentoring
If you have P3 access, you can help by proofing some pages in the Proof-only Mentoring projects that come into that round straight from P1 (where they were for Newcomers Only).
Mentors willing to share feedback template files.
This list of mentors are happy to share their feedback template files, providing you change the text to reflect your style. Contact any of them via PM if you would like their feedback template file. NB These templates and mentors are currently located at DP-INT.
- debrastorr
- bgalbrecht (online template is broken into sections with table of contents and links for easy navigation)
- TheEileen (Who thinks this PM won't work because for her the number is always off, but just do it the manual way if this doesn't work.)
- User:Kraester/Mentoring has a table of PM-ready code you can copy and paste if you want to include links to things like the Checking your diffs instructions, or the definition of stealth scanno, etc., in your mentor feedback messages.
- Skeeter451 Thanks to User:Stygiania for the original template.
