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
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.