Hmm... I didn't mean to be so abrupt and kill the thread. I think these are all great ideas, and they should really help the mentor program.
But we have to face the reality of the fact that there is very limited programming support available. There are only 3 active coders for this stuff: Anaris (who has been doing most of the new features, bug fixes, etc. for the past... year?), Tom (who's really about 1/2 active and working on more major underlying codebase changes), and Foundation (who is also 1/2 active, but has done cool stuff like training matches and flagged messages). Even if Tom agrees with a class change to Mentors, I wouldn't expect it to happen in the next 3 or 4 months. Maybe not even the next 6 months, unless some specific coder decides to take it on as a pet project.
And having said all that, I don't see any reason why this can't continue as a community project. Start a new forum thread on the Helpline board discussing which direction the mentor documentation will take. Start a new Mentor documentation project on the wiki. (Bedwyr and I are both wiki admins, and can give any required wiki support, if needed. Though I don't think any is required.) And get to work on doing the community portion of the project. Get active and get this thing going. Show community support and dedication, and you may attract coder notice to do some of the IG changes. Maybe we won't get Mentors changed from a subclass to an opt-in checkbox for all characters, or an official ruler appointed Royal Mentor, but maybe some of the other minor code-related stuff can be done, like auto links to a forum newbie corner, moving mentor/student links on the messages page, etc.
