If I said I wanted to learn everything, how entirely unhelpful would
that be? Not that I really do know enough at this point to be any more
specific...
Could a mentor help with dealing with the people, though? As an
en.wikipedian I have found developers to be somewhat harder to deal with
than what I am used to, despite them being generally the more productive
and straight-forward folks. But though many english wikipedians I have
run into have been difficult, dramatic, and at times downright horrible,
there has always been a strong force of other folks telling me/it's
okay, don't let them get to you/, and for some reason that makes it all
better. I guess I just haven't really found that kind of moral support
around these parts, so it makes things harder...
On 29/10/2012 19:16, Sumana Harihareswara wrote:
TL;DR summary: reply to tell me what you want to learn
so I can get you
a mentor.
Longer version:
Sometimes I hear that someone wants to get +2 in MediaWiki core or the
ops repo, or that they hope to someday get into Google Summer of Code or
deploy changes on the site ... but they don't know how.
And the "how" is going to depend on you. Maybe you're a systematic
learner and you thrive on a syllabus with readings. Maybe you're an
more opportunistic learner and you do better with exercises. Maybe you
prefer to discuss problems and ideas with a group, and maybe you thrive
with the personal attention of a mentor who'll review your patches and
suggest where you need to improve.
I'm just speculating. Volunteers, staffers, any kind of technical
contributors, please reply to this thread to give me data: what do you
want to learn, and how do you learn best?
Examples might be:
* I want to learn enough about language engineering and mobile to help
out with troubleshooting mobile apps and the mobile website in Asian
languages. And I learn best by chewing on hard problems and getting
help in IRC when I need it.
* I want +2 in core and I want to work for the WMF someday, but people
don't understand me and my patches get rejected or just sit waiting a
long time, so I think I need to work on my English skills and figure out
what I need to improve in my engineering approach. I need a mentor to
assign me reading and writing work and CS texts to read.
I will almost certainly use the responses to develop the structure of a
mentorship program, and start suggesting mentor-mentee matches that will
include volunteers and WMF staffers.
(Unfortunately I'll probably lose internet access in the next couple
days due to weather, but I'll respond when I get back online.)
--
---- Isarra