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_Pageā¦
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
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