Mentoring Program

[Charles Davis]

On Fri, 2008-08-15 at 08:43 +0100, Matthew East wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 9:53 PM, Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> > On Aug 12, 2008, at 12:35 PM, Marc Kaplan wrote:
> >> ...
> >> Something that I've noticed is that a lot of people want to help, but
> >> are not sure how.  I think this was attempted to be fixed with the
> >> Mentor/Mentee program, but has since fallen slightly off track.  I only
> >> think this because I signed up as a Mentee myself, but have kind of
> >> going off in my own direction.
> >
> > I see many people who ask to be mentored, and Phil Bull and others do a
> > good job of replying, but it seems like few of the volunteers then
> > follow up. Has anyone measured this?
> 
> I'm not sure we need to - it's pretty clear that the vast majority of
> people who write to the list introducing themselves have not yet taken
> their contributions further. We need to figure out why that is, and
> try to do what we can to fix it.
> 
> I think the plain fact is that contributing to any project, and
> especially this one, requires people to take the initiative quite a
> bit, read our wiki pages, and then decide what they are interested in
> contributing to. That last decision seems to be pretty difficult for
> most students, so we need to help out by providing tasks and pointing
> students towards our preview site and bug report list, and explaining
> the need to just dive in.
> 
> I've felt for a while that the "email to mailing list, response by
> Phil" system isn't very efficient, not least because it requires Phil
> to do quite a bit of work and because by the time they are writing to
> the list, the students haven't been given any information about what
> we do or where they can help. I think we should amend the process on
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DocumentationTeam/Mentoring so that the person
> who is interested in contributing is given that information *first* to
> enable them to understand how to contribute, and where to contribute;
> and is then encouraged to ask additional questions that they have on
> the mailing list. If necessary (and it won't be in every case) they
> can request a specific mentor, but otherwise the mentor will be the
> whole group.
> 
> > I also notice some people posting about helping out with translations,
> > or wanting to help out but not being particularly fluent in English.
> > Possibly they could be pointed directly to the relevant translation
> > team.
> 
> +1
> 
> -- 
> Matthew East
> http://www.mdke.org
> gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF
I had replied a moment ago but gt stuck in the moderation queue since I
pulled the bonehead move of using the wrong email profile. They say
things happen for a reason and in this case it works out :)

here is my revised thought:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DocumentationTeam/Mentoring step 4 of the
process could be changed from "We'll set you up with some tasks as soon
as possible" to maybe point at a list of tasks separated by "focus"
area. Possibly have it set up in the way the tech review status page is
arranged.

This gives a potential meber something to do while they wait and can
also save mentors from having "ghost students". Just a thought- take it
for what it is and feel free to improve upon it or reject it flat
out :) 

It's good to get input from the students perspective as well as the
mentors perspective since thats the only way we can improve the program.

-- 
Chuck
charles.davis at ubuntu.com
OpenPGP Key ID:1024D/19B4CF71
Fingerprint: 0D29 4D49 AE37 48A6 2EC8 0746 11DA EF8B 19B4 CF71
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