## New User Mentor
(Naming stuff is hard... I don't know if I like that role name, but whatever. I don't have a lot of time right now, so I'll refine this later.)

In the City of Heroes video game a player could flag themselves with either "Helper" or "Help me". This would change their character's name plate so that other users would know who they could ask for help and who might need help. I don't know how well the "Help me" tag worked out, but the Helpers were a pretty nice group who would wait by the spawn point and offer new users help getting started. I experienced the same thing when we tried Fallout 76. There was a group of players that would hang out where the newbies showed up after the tutorial and give them a few things to help get them started playing. It was a really nice introduction to the game.

This would be a volunteer role (not elected) available after someone has met a certain set of requirements - reputation threshold, positive question/answer reception, no suspensions in the past 6 months, mod team doesn't object, etc. When I volunteered for Musixmatch they had an "academy" that went over the various rules and best practices and gave me a certificate after I passed a short practical test. Being "certified" opened up a different level of participation, so this might be a way to ensure that the mentors have some basic training before letting them loose on the newbies. 

Volunteering as a mentor will 
 * give them a special icon by their name so users know they are open to questions
 * some mechanism to be available for newbies to ask them questions, like getting notifications whenever someone posts in a special chat room 
 * some sort of filter for newbie posts so they can focus on them
 * some way for the people they've helped to give them an anonymous "thank you" thumbs up (maybe it counts for a badge?)

Mentors should be able to turn on/off the mentoring after they've passed the initial vetting, so that if they are getting burned out or they have other obligations they can take a step back. They maybe have to do it in some reasonably large chunks of time, so they can't flip it on or off every other day? 

I also think mentors should be able to engage with each other as a group (much like elected moderators can) to get and share advice on mentoring. I don't know if there needs to be some sort of limit on how many people can be mentors, but there may need to be some sort of participation commitment.  

A newly registered user could be asked if they wanted to "say hello" to the mentors as an introduction to the feature.