Mentor needs to mean something again

[EaMett]

“I can count the bad mentors on the fingers of one hand” - I've heard it dozens of times here. Always, for some reason, from mentors. However, topics about bad mentors and dozens of pages of commentary appear on this forum regularly. Why's that?

It's a mix of survivor bias, anecdotal evidence (on everyone's part, including myself here even though I have been keeping tabs) and probably misplaced expectations. There aren't more jerks among mentors than in the general population. Ratios are going to be similar and as such anyone complaining about a majority of mentors being bad is clearly not making an objective representation of the field and needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
When it comes to expectations, so many people come into the forums and complain about mentors playing poorly or not knowing the answers to questions. As if a mentor can't learn a new class and tunnel vision, and/or must know everything. You can mix in a bit of mentors dropping ex fights in mentor roulette to the mix as well (which imo is one of the bigger issues, but doesn't necessarily reflect how good/bad such mentors are). So of course if some people's expectations are way up there they're going to get upset at every corner.

I'm all for changing the mentor icon and removing whatever rewards. If only to demonstrate that it won't change much for many.