A problem and a proposed solution.

Mentoring system sounds good. Count me in as a (potential) mentor.

Perhaps the best way would be to have an setting that you could switch, like clan duty, to say you're availabe for mentor games. It would be good to be able to disable it from time to time, when on vacation or busy.

Originally posted by Exy
Perhaps the best way would be to have an setting that you could switch, like clan duty, to say you're availabe for mentor games. It would be good to be able to disable it from time to time, when on vacation or busy.

the option should probably be available only to players above a certain rating...

btw - if anyone is in a teaching mood I'd love some non rated mentored games! - I play bazillions of times a day

I think if you read Russ' original post, it's not really about rating or helping players to improve. It's more to do with attrition. Russ wants to guarantee that new members don't get discouraged and leave cos the first few games they play are slow or never completed.

Russ,

I am happy to play a couple of games against new members. Maybe you could set a limit. i.e. set you limit to 5, once you drop below this level you pick up the next new member to join.

Andrew

I like the idea of a tournament for newbies, perhaps the prize could be a free months membership. Lets say a newbie is only allowed to participate in 2 or 3 of these tournaments. Make it a one move a day timeouut and that will guarantee activity. This idea might be better than the mentor idea. Another thought woulld be that a newbie can only play unrated games , if he wishes to have a rating then subscribe. Finally sorry for not having read the whole thread, it's more like a book, perhaps a new thread should be started sumarising the position so far.

Originally posted by Exy
I think if you read Russ' original post, ... It's more to do with attrition. Russ wants to guarantee that new members don't get discouraged and leave ...

I agree . I think this idea has gotten very complicated .
Simply put, it is important that new players not get stuck with 6 no show players for their opponents. They opinion of RHP will be poor and leave .
All that is needed is a group of committed RHP players to agree to play players new to the site . ( Not sure of the numbers, maybe 2 for each newbie ? ) .
Just play the games the way you play any other game. Doesn't have to be super fast, don't have to let them win, just DON'T STOP playing.
I think game play on this site is awesome, and others will to. No need to misrepresent it in anyway.

I assume you challenged the p1200 players?

I have cured the problem to some degree. After trying to make this site as easy to use as possible for newbs (automatically allocating games after registration) I have now made people work a little to get going.

So, I changed my focus, rather than trying to get everyone playing, I have realised there are those who sign up but had no intention of playing anyway!

So after registration now, players can choose a number of ways of getting started. This includes entering up to 3 email addresses of friends to create invite games, using a wizard to suggest opponents, challenging people from the player directory or taking an open invite. This went in last Friday after one crazy coding marathon. (After I created this thread)

By making people work a little, I have filtered those who were unlikely to make the effort to play anyway.

The mentoring option will just be one further way of getting started. Those who elect to start this way will probably be quite keen – (as they are actively requesting a mentor games) so they should all be movers.

-Russ

I jsut barged in to this thead, this is even one of my first real visits to this forum. I will try to be here more often.

The ideas sound good, including the mentors. I have no idea what is in those 4 pages of posts, i should mention that before making any statements.

The problem is that newly registered (non-paying) members get assigned to non-moving people of the same category (it's hard to believe that paying members don't move anymore).

Why not tweak the wizard so that the newb get assigned to paying members, who are still active? Just now i realise that this is what the mentor system means...

In that case, i would volunteer to be a mentor as well.

Hopefully the tweaks will improve things. However, I still feel that having the ability to put on a flag (like the clan duty flag) that includes you in the list of players who will be matched against new starters makes some sense long term. The vacation flag should over rule this and the query should look for those uses flagged as available who have moved most recently as they are likely to still be online. Seems pretty straightforward to me but I'm not the one doing the coding.

I would happily mentor / play games with new users on the site and / or answer any questions that they might have if you go ahead with that proposal.

One thing that springs to mind though is that, particularly if they do not understand the rating system, a newbie to chess could be in danger of getting "mentoring" games against opponents far in excess of their own abilities (not necessarily me but other, better players 😀 ) which might then make them disallusioned with the site if they lose all their opening games.

Maybe there could be some kind of option for the new user to indicate the preferred "level" of a mentor opponent e.g. rookie, average, hard core and then match the games to a rated mentor of suitable ability?

Originally posted by Russ
We have a problem at RHP central at the moment, and I shall share it with you here. Someone may have some good suggestions.

After loads of effort, we are now well placed on Google – higher than ever. (Target phrase ‘online chess’ – placed 6th as of yesterday.) Getting a good Google position was one of my main targets (it is not easy), but it hasn’t reaped ...[text shortened]... about that, but would anyone be interested in becoming a mentor? Any further ideas?

-Russ

I have an idea, don't know if anyone else suggested this, i've got better things to do than read 50 posts, but here goes.

How about incentives for existing users to intorduce new members?

Maybe if you give existing pawn stars a free renewal if they introduce 20 new pawn stars to the site?

Just a thought, i've told everyone who i know likes chess about this site, none of them have joined yet but im pretty certain word of mouth is your best ally.

Have you thought about advertising in some chess magazines?

You might want to try New in Chess, or perhaps even a corresspondence mag of some description.

😉

Another thing,

You might want to consider promoting the site abroad. I work nights (UK Time) and the site is pretty dead over night. Sure people play, but the open invites page (the first page any new user looks at) is generally quite empty.

It's difficult to get people to play when u want them to but i think introducing 1 or 2 hour games would make the site more enjoyable to new users who perhaps didn't come here to play 2 month long games.

Advertising in some magazines like 'New in chess' couldn't do any harm either 😉

I realize i've digressed a bit here but the point of this thread is to find ways to increase the amount of subscribers, no?🙄😲😵😏🙄😲🙄🙄🙄🙄

I posted a similar idea like this not knowing russ already came up with it,I was on vacation in Arizona when all this happened.Thank you Phla for directing me to this thread!

I wanna sign up as a potential mentor too 🙂

As you probably know, most people play during their time at work. So even the US folks have gone home when you are at active. I need to encourage more antipodeans to play, I guess. 🙂

To be honest though, it is helpful to us that things slow down a little during the night - it means I can sleep a little easier.

-Russ