After years of faithful service helping others to improve the quality of their roleplaying, and answering questions from roleplayers, Moderation would like to announce the closure of the RP Mentor Program.
This is no one's "fault," and if we had to pick one reason in particular for the closure of the program, it would be inactivity. We want everyone to know that the Mentors have long been helpful towards others, and active in reaching out to the NS RP Community at large, but when there is limited demand for their services, there is not as much that they can realistically do. There are multiple factors that play into this, one example being the rise of instant messenger or chat services, and the subsequent decrease in the necessity of overarching guidance. RPers are increasingly finding guidance in their own thread communities, and the individual mentors are not as capable of going out and keeping up the amount of general community activity that they used to, due to multiple factors.
It has long been a philosophy of the Moderation team that staff titles should never become some sort of unearned royalty status awarded on the basis of seniority or popularity rather than contribution, which the Mentor jacket has unfortunately degraded into becoming over the years. We will keep the possibility of re-opening the program some day on the table, if there comes such a time where a demand for it has returned. Until then, we have no problem with anyone continuing to maintain any Mentorship activities in an informal capacity, as was largely the case before the Mentorship program was founded.
We want to extend a genuine thank you to everyone, past and present, who has ever served as a Mentor. Regardless of how things have ended, everyone who has ever held the role has done so because at some point they contributed great value to the community, and many will doubtless continue to do so. NS is, in some small way, a better place because of you, and that will not go unappreciated or forgotten.
We would also like to announce that each of the current RP Mentors will be retaining Postmaster General status for free, reflective of the services that they have provided as members of the NS Staff.
Thank you for all the good memories, and good luck on your future endeavors.
(Portions of this post have been contributed by both Lamoni and Giovenith)
