I could not find an a thread about this - has anyone ever looked into how successful the mentorship process is on wikipedia?

Is it meant to improve editing or simply a way to provide a auditable process for saying "well we tried and then we banned them", similar to the way that simple wikipedia has been used in the past as the salt mines of the wikipedia family?

There is something very strange about a process where savvy experienced 50 year old POV pushers are suppose to redeemed by 15 year advisers and the like

I was once forced by the ArbCom to accept Tony Sidaway as a mentor (even though he had been revert warring against me--that's how crazy things were back in those days). Fortunately he had no effect on me.

It all depends on what mentoring is supposed to achieve. If someone really doesn't know what to do or has major weaknesses, of course mentoring (with the right sort of mentor) is a good thing. I suspect it's more often used on Wikipedia as a figleaf to avoid banning someone.

In the cases that I know of, either

(a) the mentor ignored all and never responded to any questions or complaints, or
(b) the mentor joined and facilitated the posse that was harassing, defaming and sabotaging the user.

I just Googled "Wikipedia become good editor" and was relieved to see WR still wasn't returned on the first page of results.

Perhaps. I think some like Durova have been more successful at it than I was my own recent pathetic efforts.