[haiku] Re: [GSoC]: who is willing to mentor this year?

  • From: Stephan Aßmus <superstippi@xxxxxx>
  • To: haiku@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:08:01 +0100

Matt Madia schrieb:
On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 10:58 AM, Oliver Ruiz Dorantes
<oliver.ruiz.dorantes@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm willing to help out,  but as their questions become more c/c++
specific my use quickly diminishes.

In any case helping students with the setup of the environment, and first
touch with the OS, is something that does not require c/C++ and would unload
another mentor's workload....

This I feel confident helping with.
Should people willing to do this be listed as 'backup mentors' or
should we include some statement in the application to the tune of :
"To increase response time, we are employing assistant mentors.  Their
job is to assist students with non-project specific issues, which
includes  general building, compilation, and development environment."

No. I wouldn't mention anything about non-project specific which makes it look like Mentors are not willing to spent time. But we can mention that we have the general mentor pool, which is something other projects have been doing in past years as well. Just mentioning something about reducing the risk of a mentor being temporarily unavailable should be enough.


On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 11:39 AM, Salvatore Benedetto <emitrax@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
We had both in the last two years, and you can see how it ended up. Going public
doesn't ncessarily mean you have to follow the discussion. It only
means, that if you
want, you can either follow and/or help.

I agree. The lack of transparency was an issue last year.

What about agreeing to include a subject header to indicate the email
is intended for anyone to read?
That would allow students and mentors to use a mail filter to identify
such emails.

I think this idea will just not work out in real life. We have specific mentors assigned to specific students for a reason. Private communication is perfectly ok. Especially since it's also about helping students becoming familiar with open source projects and communities. That's why there is a *mentor*, not a throwing into the cold water. Students are often shy at first.

But we need to be strict about some requirements. If we say status report then and then, we need to be strict. And one of last years problems was also that some mentors were not always quick to reply. All this will not be helped by forbidding private communication.

Best regards,
-Stephan



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