Phil Boswell schreef:
Rob Church wrote:
On 07/01/07, GerardM gerard.meijssen@gmail.com wrote: [snip]
If this move is intended to bring more volunteer developers to MediaWiki I am afraid that it is just window dressing. It will not make much of a difference because people come and stay as they like. If you TRULY want more developers, having someone dedicated to coaching the people who are new to the MediaWiki code would make much more of a difference. Having someone coach people who are doing projects and stuff in Universities would really help.
Absolutely! New developers come in all very excited about the thing - they've submitted a few patches, we've generally used those to help mould them into shape, and we've got a feel for them - but they're still very "green" - I certainly was. It would make excellent sense if a more experienced developer was assigned to "mentor" newbies, and I don't mean that in the sense of being up their noses - I mean that in a sense of giving their changes a quick eyeball, and being available to answer the odd email about how something should be done.
Interestingly, given the stink being raised in certain on-wiki circles about IRC and off-wiki communication, it is evident from lurking on the appropriate channels that this is already being done spectacularly well by Brion and Rob, not to mention the other devs who are there from time to time.
I just wanted to make it absolutely clear that the "mentoring" process is already ongoing, if not necessarily officially or under that precise name, and seems to be working very well indeed.
HTH HAND
Hoi, There are two ways in which you can read a proposal for change. You can read it as a criticism and you can read it as a possible road forward that intents to allow us to do even better in the future. With a person that would be tasked to support people new to MediaWiki, it is not at all a good idea to have this person be the only person that these new people are exposed to. Development is done best when there is a community of people working together. This will not change, what would change is the scale of the influx of people. You may already notice that the amount of people working on the MediaWiki code is increasing. You may have noticed that some aspects of the MediaWiki code are actively developed but are of no relevance to other groups that do not have an interest. This means that we now have several sub communities of developers all involved in MediaWiki all being part of the MediaWiki ecology.
My feeling is that as the use of MediaWiki is increasing, the scope of what people work on will increase at the same time. This is to be expected to have a direct impact on the scope developers work on as well. Consequently, it will be of an increasing importance to both maintain the architectural integrity of MediaWiki and allow for the growth of the developer community at the same time.
Thanks, GerardM