In alpha testing is a new feature called the Professor. The idea here is to link to FAQ entries and other documentation (which we've just written a lot of) when you are typing a new forum thread or a new feedback message if it matches the pattern for a question our documentation can answer. So if you didn't find it in the FAQ, you get another chance to get your answer right away from the Professor instead of waiting for us to reply.

I know alpha testers are among the least likely to be asking questions that have been asked enough times for us to make keyword rules for them, but we'd be grateful if a few of you alpha testers could check the Professor out and let us know what you think before we release him. You can try him on the contact page by starting to type questions that we've probably answered in the FAQ, like asking about the iPhone app or how spaced repetition works, or anything, really.

He won't catch everything, and he'll suggest things that are irrelevant sometimes, but we're hoping that he'll be a net win. We don't want to make anything too distracting, but we do want to help index our documentation so we can spend less time answering emails and more time improving the site.

Works for me. Are you going to train him to post replies as well? ;)

How to become an alpha tester?

Nah, he's only for the surface information, not for conversations or anything. We might code some conversations in as easter eggs later, if people like him.

The alpha tester setting is on your account - general settings, at the bottom.

easter eggs: are there any in the character recognition? I've drawn all kinds of different things instead of characters but nothing special happened ;-)

I managed to trigger the professor for iPhone and example sentences, seems to work quite well...I also tried "raw squigs", "heisig keywords", "tone colors" and the professor didn't try to help me, but I think you probably know best what people want to know...

I got a few responses from the professor when I tested him out - namely on iphone and wacom, but like wb's results, he's pretty limited for triggers right now, I tried a bunch of other stuff that I thought might set him off, but to no avail. My two cents is that I don't think he'll be a distraction, so I would go through with the idea, though he needs a much bigger vocabulary to be very useful.

Also, heads up, the link he gave me for "wacom" gave me a 404 error, it was: http://www.skritter.cn/input_review

Incidentally, if you're going to add easter eggs into the professor, I think "How do I turn off the Professor" has some potential as a starting point.

No easter eggs in the character recognition, but there is one involving the Flash window.

For the options you mention, wb, we're going to add links for more information right next to the options, which should be a better way of displaying it than using the Professor.

Fixed that link on the input-review (instead of input_review).

There isn't yet a way to turn him off. If people complain about him, we will make one.

Thanks, guys!

I wasn't thinking of a way to turn him off, but as a potential easter egg, leading to the professor getting offended and defensive, or somesuch thing.