Non-MOTU as MOTU Mentors and bad advice

[Christophe Sauthier]

I am speaking here as the mentoring receptionist.

On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 4:39 AM, Scott Kitterman <ubuntu at kitterman.com> wrote:
> 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.
Currently people allowed to mentors are:
    -> for the junior program : Ubuntu Universe Contributors, Motus, Core dev
    -> for the senior program : Motus, Core dev


>
> 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.
As I said on the IRC, I will contact the mentor to understand his
point of view. (and I have to mention that ScottK was more than OK
with that, since he pointed out that he didn't have both side of the
stroy).

>
> 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.
I think it is a general good sense advice. Not only limited to the
mentoring program...


>
> 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 really thing you have spotted the main problem : what is exactly the
requirements needed in order to become a Ubuntu Universe Contributors
? After some discussions on IRC, apparently it is only granted on a
development interaction, while for many people (myself included) there
is a low technical review (of course nothing compared to the review
done for MOTUship).
I think looking at the applications of the various uuc (that have been
granted so far), is a good exemple of that.