I wondered if there would be any (at all) support for the idea of members willingly offering to tutor one other member who is new to Theravada Buddhism. What i mean by tutoring, is to connect more personally, say perhaps through email or even through the PM system on the forum, and to answer questions of that person, and be mindful of thier progression. The reason i suggest only one per tutor is that it could potentially be time consuming and quite an effort. I would also suggest that people should be accepted (by a method i havent thought of yet), to be tutors, and this would prevent the spreading of deliberate bad advice from members who have joined souly for the purpose of trolling.
These are my considered benefits:
- Better group cohesion, people would feel more supported and part of the process
- Guided learning and help from someone further along in the process than oneself
- It would be quite vulnerable to people signing up just to waste time. Sadly there are a great number of people willing to waste vast quantities of thier own time in order to waste parts of someone elses
- It could through a shortage of longer term members create a waiting list and make people feel excluded