Mentoring Systems Within the Community

[cprofitt]

On Sat, 2014-12-13 at 02:00 +0000, Phill Whiteside wrote:
> Svetlana,
> 
> 
> to stop any bickering, as you can see - I've asked the founder of UBT
> to tell us what it was founded FOR, as opposed to people who joined
> later thought it was for. As you know he is the gentle hand that is
> guiding linuxpadawan[1]. He can swiftly put an end to what UBT BECAME,
> as opposed to what is WAS for.
> 
I would not call it bickering Phil. I would call it a difference of
opinion based on a point of reference. While I was not the founder my
time with the UBT goes back to the early days.

The mission of the UBT (originally the Ubuntu Forums Beginners Team - if
memory serves) was to build a team that would provide support to Ubuntu
users via the forum. In other words a team that would produce tutorials
and answer requests for help. To help the team provide that there was an
obvious need to recruit people who were actively providing quality
answers on the forums.

Later as the team grew the team started to spread to documentation,
wiki, bug control and other areas of the Ubuntu support structure. At
that point the focus on 'master' and 'padawan' was a focus on someone
who knew an area such as bug control well and could teach others how to
contribute in that area. There was still a focus on providing answers on
the forums, but there was a growing focus on helping people move to the
stage of contributing. It was around this time the team developed focus
groups in an effort to ensure that people rendering assistance in an
area were qualified to do so. For example: giving advice on the forums
is significantly different than following bug-control guidelines for bug
triage.

After that there was an effort to to produce training material that
could be utilized in both in-person and on-line courses. During this
time the team started contributing heavily to #ubuntu-classroom and
other efforts.

I am not sure this is germane to the current discussion, but if you want
a true sense of the history you could look at the various versions of
the UBT wiki and see how the team mission changed over time. I am not
sure if the forums archive exists or not.

For example in the 2008-11-30 version the mission read:

"The Ubuntu Forums Beginners Team was created to to help new users have
the best experience possible with Ubuntu. We primarily help on the
Absolute Beginner Talk area of the Ubuntu Forums. More information can
be found by reading our Mission Statement."

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BeginnersTeam?action=recall&rev=4

That mission statement reads:

"The Ubuntu Forums Beginners Team exists to welcome new Ubuntu users to
the community and to enhance their initial experience. The team is a
community of volunteers dedicated to assisting new users on the Ubuntu
Forums. Many team members also contribute support on IRC, Launchpad, and
the Ubuntu Wiki through the team's Focus Groups. We strive to provide
diligent, gracious, and reliable guidance to new users. Compassionate
assistance to new users not only eases the initial transition to a new
operating system, but is the driving force behind the Ubuntu's
popularity. "

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BeginnersTeam/MissionStatement?action=recall&rev=1

The focus of the UFBT and the UBT was to provide training to
contributors who wanted to help support people using Ubuntu.
> 
Charles
> 

> 
>