Non-MOTU as MOTU Mentors and bad advice

[Scott Kitterman]

I will confess that I don't pay as much attention to the Mentors program as I 
probably should.  I had no idea we were allowing people who weren't MOTU to 
act formally as mentors.

This is a stunningly bad idea and should stop.  I just finished trying to help 
a novice mentee who was trying to upgrade his system to Jaunty because his 
mentor told him too.  

Unless you really know what you are doing, running Jaunty right now is 
insanity.  It's also completely unnecessary to learn and do packaging work 
for Jaunty.

The individual is an UCD, and I suspect that is the basis on which it was 
considered appropriate.  This is a complete misuse of UCD.  UCD is a measure 
of community participation and involvement.  There is no particular technical 
expertise needed to be a UCD.

I know there aren't enough mentors, but I seriously think no mentor is better 
than one who doesn't know what he's doing.

I'm not sure if this needs a policy decision at a MOTU meeting to change.  If 
it does, consider this the starting gun for the discussion.


Scott K