ubuntu-doc Digest, Vol 47, Issue 13

[Dougie Richardson]

Hi,
> You could scan the ubuntu-doc@ archives for people who had asked to be
> mentored between one and two months ago, and see how many of them had
> contributed to either the help.ubuntu.com wiki or one of the ubuntu-doc
> project branches in the past month. Then do the same for people who had
> asked to be mentored between two and three months ago, then the same
> for people who had asked to be mentored between three and four months
> ago, etc.
> 
> That would be rather tedious work, but probably much of it could be
> automated, and it would be valuable in showing how quickly interest
> falls off after initial mentoring. Then you can more easily tell the
> effectiveness of any future changes to the mentoring process, by how
> much it raises the curve.

I disagree, I don't see why attaching a number would help us. You're making
the assumption that the high turn over in students is as a result of
mis-management by mentors, which although possible is far less likely than
that they didn't find it as interesting or have as much time as they thought
they did.

I know I find it hard to do all the things I have to do and, much as I hate
to admit it, outside of the run up to release or when there is a major
issue, the Doc team will often take a lower priority.

This is a mistake that we make at work all the time - assuming that every
recruit we take on equals a full member in a few months time, where as we
should simply accept that although we need to improve our processes, we
cannot possibly keep everyone who volunteers.

You raise in interesting point about the wiki though, I am not sure if
creating wiki pages is as helpful in familiarising students with the system
documentation and how it works. Given the diversity and indeed disparity
between the nature of the two systems, I think the two should be kept
separate.

Cheers,

Dougie