User:Netoholic/Mentoring

Mentorship failed.

No, not for the reasons you think.

Mentorship failed because it meant different things to everyone involved.

or me, mentorship was a chance to have three respectable community members review my actions. They would see what I was doing and, when they thought something was wrong, would benefit from listening to my perspective. For a long time, I've felt as though, much as I try to avoid it, my individual actions are judged based on a cynical and inaccurate perception of me. This has often led others to assume a very critical stance with regards to my edits and set higher expectations than would otherwise be applied.

I had hoped that mentorship would change all of that by having an opportunity to show that I am far less controversial than is generally perceived. I'm not saying at all that I was ever a perfect editor. I'm trying to say that, if certain edits had been done by someone else, far fewer of would have been so challenged. In fact, I feel like many of my better contributions would have been accepted much faster than they were had this perception not been there. It's understandable, I suppose, because who wants to be known as agreeing with someone like me, who is perceived as being a negative element. This is evidenced by how many people would say, reluctantly, things like "I hate to admit it, but I agree with Netoholic."  Even when I had support for my views, I was still insulted. Worse yet, the perception was still being spread that there is "something wrong" with agreeing with me.

Throughout the mentorship, I felt it was working wonderfully. The mentors did look into a few conflicts and largely agreed with my reasoning - even saying so on many occasions, while giving advice for how to better handle things in the future. They seemed frank and open with their opinions. Even when they were critical, it was most often very positive. I felt as though it was clear that my recent interactions, though not without minor conflict, were improving in general.

I didn't realize how wrong I was.