Beginners Team and Bug Squad Mentoring

[Sense Hofstede]

On 25 August 2010 14:01, Duane Hinnen <duanedesign at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> I am a member of the Ubuntu Beginners Team. We help new user with Ubuntu,
> and help them get involved in the community.  We have Focus Groups that help
> users get involved in different parts of the community. We have a Launchpad
> Focus Group that is primarily involved in teaching people about Bug Triage.
> Recently we have been drawing up guidelines and better organizing our
> efforts. While doing this we realized that Bug Squad was also reorganising
> and reinvigorating their effort. We are interested in determining how these
> two efforts can best serve the community. First I want to open a dialogue
> about the simultaneous  existence of the two programs, and if you feel there
> is room for both. The Beginners Team is for community members who not only
> want to learn about the community but want to become a mentor themselves. I
> feel that would be the main distinction between the two efforts. Users are
> assigned a mentor and after showing a certain level of commitment and
> expertise are granted membership in the Beginners Team at which point they
> start mentoring people themselves. Other than that our process is very
> similar to the Bug Squad Mentor program. I have thought a lot about this and
> if the members responsible for the Bug Squad Mentor program feel this is a
> duplication of effort that is somehow a negative we can do one of two
> things.
>
> 1. Our members responsible for the Launchpad Focus Group would join the Bug
> Squad Mentor Program. Then when users approach the Beginners Team about Bug
> Mentoring they would be assigned a Beginners Team Mentor who is also a Bug
> Squad Mentor. They would then go through the established program you have in
> place. Then at a certain time in the process also become a Beginners Team
> member.
>
> 2. We could gracefully close up our Bug Triage Mentoring and just send
> people your way.
>
> Please let me know what you think about having two places in the community
> people could go for Triage Mentoring. If you feel that is a problem let me
> know what you think the best solution might be. One of the 2 ideas I
> outlined or possibly something I have not thought of.
>
> Thank you for your serious consideration of this matter.
>
> --
> Duane Hinnen
> duanedesign at ubuntu.com
> sip:duanedesign at ekiga.net
>
Hello,

Thank you for raising this point. It is good to take a look at this
and make sure we are not wasting time on duplicate efforts. Let me
first explain our system before I continue to explore how both
programmes could interact.

The Bug Squad Mentorship programme works like this: after reading the
instructions on the programme's wiki page [1] and making the requested
information available the prospective students request membership of
the 'bugsquad-mentorship' Launchpad team. [2] The four administrators
of the programme — Pedro Villavicencio, hggdh, Vishnoo, and I — go
through the list to check whether the applicants fulfil the
requirements. If that isn't the case the applicant is rejected and
asked to reapply once (s)he has provided all the required information.
If the applicant fulfils the requirements the administrator adds him
or her to the list of prospective students. [3]

If there is a mentor available — the mentors are listed in a table on
the programme's wiki page [1] — one of the administrator assigns a
student to the mentor, basing his decision on the timezone and
interests of the student and the available mentor. Then he mails the
student to let him or her know that a mentor is assigned to him or
her. A similar mail is sent to the mentor. In that mail the mentor is
urged to make first contact as soon as possible.

The mentors are asked to provide monthly updates of the status of
their students either at the Bug Squad meeting, or on the mailing list
if they weren't available during the meeting times.

The goal of the mentorship programme is not to make the students
mentors themselves, but to make them ready for membership of Ubuntu
Bug Control. When a mentor approves the application of his or her
student for Ubuntu Bug Control, the application is accepted and the
student becomes a former student.

I hope that the above makes our methods clear to you. Now, lets return
to the subject of the intersections of both programmes. I feel that it
would be a waste of effort to run both programmes next to each other,
separately. Having two places where people can get bug triaging
mentorship could work confusing. It would also spread the mentors
thin, while we need any mentor we can get.

Letting the two programmes exist next to each other is not what I
would prefer. Instead I would suggest, and I hope that this isn't
painful for you — I really appreciate your efforts, because we always
need more triagers — to ask your mentors to join the Bug Squad
Mentorship programme and make that the only programme. You could, like
you suggested, refer to us when people need mentorship.

That would seem like the best solution to me, since the Bug Squad is
the closest you can get to the Bug Squad, so you're sure its
mentorship programme is following the latest recommendations and
guidelines, and that the students have easy access to the Bug Control.
Another reason is that I, personally, feel that the Beginner Team is
more about general introductions to the community. I.e. explaining the
people how to use Launchpad, or learning them how to use the community
resources. More specific things, like teaching the process of bug
triaging, seems better at place in the Bug Squad.

I would also like to hear what the other Bug Squad Mentorship
programme administrators think, or anyone else. Do you agree? Of
course, suggestions for improving the current system are also welcome,
if the Beginner Team has got a different (better?) process for
admitting students.

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad/Mentors
[2] https://launchpad.net/~bugsquad-mentorship
[3] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad/Mentors/Students

Kind regards,
-- 
Sense Hofstede
http://sensehofstede.nl/