Re: Four days

[Michael Gilbert <michael.s.gilbert@gmail.com>]

On Fri, 1 Oct 2010 19:00:36 -0400 (EDT) Asheesh Laroia wrote:

> Hey everyone,
> 
> Niels Thykier and I were talking on #debian-mentors. I was saying that I 
> find the debian-mentors list kind of lonely and impersonal -- it's mostly 
> RFSs, and so many emails don't even get an answer.
> 
> How depressing!
> 
> So I was thinking it would be nice if every email thread got a public 
> reply within four days. That's a goal that Niels and I have set, and we 
> hope maybe some of you help too. Even if we reply, "Eek, I'm swamped. Try 
> again later," I figure that is nicer than hearing nothing back.
> 
> In general, I encourage mentees and mentors to consider 4 days the 
> timeout on your debian-mentors conversations. So if you email your usual 
> sponsor and don't hear an answer within 4 days, try once more. After 
> another four days, email the list asking for a sponsor (explaining that 
> you have a normal sponsor).
> 
> I'm hoping to take some of the uncertainty out of the process. What do you 
> guys think?
> 
> And what other cultural improvements can we make to debian-mentors? What 
> else can we do to make this place supportive and helpful for the progress 
> of y'all mentees into sparkly Debian contributors and developers?

As someone who has attempted to go through the mentoring process, I
agree very much that it is rather depressing.

I think a possibly good solution would be to set up a
mentors.debian.net bug page (similar to other debian resources such as
[0]).  That would make it much clearer which mentoring tasks are still
open.  It would also make it possible categorize new submissions, which
would help potential mentors focus on their areas of interest.

Best wishes,
Mike

[0] http://bugs.debian.org/release.debian.org