Mentoring Program

[Matthew East]

Hi,

On Sat, Aug 16, 2008 at 10:00 PM, Connor Imes <rocket2dmn at aol.com> wrote:
> Matthew East wrote:
>> Also, I don't think it's necessary: if someone mails this list and is
>> interested in working on Kubuntu or Server material, then they will
>> get a reply from someone who is interested in that area or at least
>> get a decent pointer from someone else. I think it's important for the
>> list to be the central contact point for everyone, rather than
>> individuals, because individuals come and go in terms of contribution
>> levels, and the list will always be around.
>>
> As has been noticed before, people are generally _not_ getting the
> responses necessary get pointers they need.

It's not really true that questions are going unanswered on the list,
actually I think that I haven't seen a genuine question about our
processes or tools go unanswered for a really long time. The real
problem is that we have people who express an interest, but don't take
it further - the only thing we can do to improve that is to lower the
barriers to entry so that there is no confusion over how a contributor
can take their interest further if they wish to, and to be as
welcoming as possible by making it clear that questions are
encouraged.

I agree that quite a few of the introductory emails from new
contributors go unanswered, but as I've said elsewhere that's because
answering all of those emails is actually pretty hard work, however
good a job Phil does with them. If there is a lack of response, it's
because the docteam doesn't have that many genuine contributors. It's
not realistic to start making subgroups while that remains the case.
It's more efficient for everyone if we help potential contributors to
help themselves by keeping our wiki pages and processes as simple and
clear as possible.

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF