Hey,
So a quick question. I volunteered to mentor, but it doesn't seem I've been
listed as a potential mentor on any projects. Should I be doing something
to seek out students or is there just enough mentors at the moment?
Thanks,
*-- *
*Tyler Romeo*
Stevens Institute of Technology, Class of 2015
Major in Computer Science
| tylerromeo(a)gmail.com
On Sun, Apr 28, 2013 at 1:24 PM, Quim Gil <qgil(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Specifically about the 2 mentors per project
requirement:
On 04/27/2013 04:58 PM, Quim Gil wrote:
* Get a second co-mentor for the proposals you
want to see accepted.
It's not easy but the success rate is remarkably higher, and the
workload for each remarkably lower. Could be a profile complementary to
yours: technical vs community, professional vs volunteer, maintainer vs
power user, East vs West... The candidate and the project will benefit a
lot.
Brian comments that, for instance, for
Proofread Page extension needs to be refactored
www.mediawiki.org/wiki/**Mentorship_programs/Possible_**
projects#Proofread_Page_**extension_needs_to_be_**refactored<http://www.…
Tpt is the only maintainer and looking at past contributions there is no
other significant active contributor.
Sure, this is a problem and in fact a factor to push a GSoC / OPW project
in order to increase the community health of an "endangered species". ;)
However, the other co-mentor could be e.g. a qualified stakeholder e.g. in
this case a Wikisource admin or someone recognized in that community,
responsive, able to help with prioritization of requirements, with
testing...
GSoC recommends two mentors per project and we have reached to the same
conclusion based on our experiences.
See also the lessons learned at
https://www.mediawiki.org/**
wiki/Outreach_Program_for_**Women/Round_5<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki…
The case for the second co-mentor is not only "what happens when a mentor
disappears", which is a extreme case. A second co-mentor is a second voice,
a second factor of peer pressure, a second eye to detect problems earlier...
A team of 3 remote people also leads necessarily to better remote
communications, better documentation and better openness and capacity to
include more voices and more people in a project.
Also, mentors learn as much as interns. Two new co-mentors will have an
easier time than a new mentor alone. A rookie co-mentor can learn from one
mentor with prior mentoring experience, and then a year later s/he will be
ready to be the main co-mentor...
Two people alone can do a lot of progress, but they carry a higher risk of
isolation from the rest of the community. And then one day the intern or
the mentor starts slacking or vanishing for some reason and all what is
left are private emails, IRC/IM conversations and other types of
undocumented, lost wisdom.
--
Quim Gil
Technical Contributor Coordinator @ Wikimedia Foundation
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/**User:Qgil<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/…
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