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1. Mentors may award a new user a mentor bonus of 50 reputation. This gives the new user a basic package of privileges, including being able to vote up, comment everywhere, and participate on meta and chat. (It's like the association bonus' younger sibling. The mentor bonus won't count for purposes of awarding that bonus on other sites.)

2. All mentee activity and responses are pushed to the mentor's inbox (or perhaps a new indicator on the top bar). That way the seasoned user can monitor the progress of their protege.

3. Mentors gain special access to some moderator actions over their student's content:

Well, it should be obvious with a bit of digging that the new user was gifted the mentor bonus. (There will even be an entry in the reputation accounting.) And if some 30k+ user suddenly close one of their questions single-handedly, it'll be clear what happened. But the identity of their sponsor should be generally secret to minimize social pressure on them:

1. Mentors may award a new user a mentor bonus of 50 reputation. This gives the new user a basic package of privileges, including being able to vote up, comment everywhere, and participate on meta and chat. (It's like the association bonus' younger sibling. The mentor bonus won't count for purposes of awarding that bonus on other sites.)

2. All mentee activity and responses are pushed to the mentor's inbox (or perhaps a new indicator on the top bar). That way the seasoned user can monitor the progress of their protege.

3. Mentors gain special access to some moderator actions over their student's content:

Well, it should be obvious with a bit of digging that the new user was gifted the mentor bonus. (There will even be an entry in the reputation accounting.) And if some 30k+ user suddenly close one of their questions single-handedly, it'll be clear what happened. But the identity of their sponsor should be generally secret to minimize social pressure on them:

I'd like to float a modified version of this idea as a 30k (10k beta) privilege.

Partial moderator privileges give mentors the ability to quickly step in to fix problems new users might run into with unearned powers. This requires the high-reputation user be familiar with the 10k moderator tools. If the program proves successful, I can picture moving the privilege level down to 15k (which is a bit disappointing) to expand it.

I'd like to float a modified version of this idea as a 30k (10k beta) privilege.

Partial moderator privileges give mentors the ability to quickly step in to fix problems new users might run into with unearned powers. This requires the high-reputation user be familiar with the 10k moderator tools. If the program proves successful, I can picture moving the privilege level down to 15k (which is a bit disappointing) to expand it.

Anonymous benefactor: An established user notices a post from a new user who shows promise. At the moment, the veteran can try using votes and comments to encourage the newbie. But she can't easily monitor responses that user receives (which might contain bad advice) or notice problems with new posts. With the mentor privilege, she can give new users a helping hand and keep tabs on their experience.

Anonymous benefactor: An established user notices a post from a new user who shows promise. At the moment, the veteran can try using votes and comments to encourage the newbie. But she can't easily monitor responses that user receives (which might contain bad advice) or notice problems with new posts. With the mentor privilege, she can give new users a helping hand and keep tabs on their experience.