Re: NM process, AMs, advocates, mentors and applicants
On Tue, Nov 20, 2007 at 02:08:41PM +0100, Bas Wijnen wrote:
> > Reform NM: mentor-advocates should teach their applicants and help
> > them to produce a file demonstrating that they possess all the
> > required DD skills; the AM should then check for any gaps (temporarily
> > rejecting if needed) and test the applicant, recording the test; then
> > that portfolio and test results are passed to FD and on to DAM, in a
> > verifiable, effective, timely and appropriate process.
>
> I have an idea. Let's split mentor-advocate and add the mentor function
> to the AM. You know what? You seem to have described the current
> process. The file you're talking about is known as the "private AM
> report".
I don't think it's as easy as this. Currently, the AM is not so much a
mentor, rather a "tick-off" guy who checks that the applicant is ready
to become a DD. Most of the mentoring is supposed to take place before
the NM even applies, and is carried out by the sponsors or other team
members for team-maintained packages. That said, some mentoring is
possible (like AMs could propose to act as the NMs sponsor during the
process) but AFAIK it is not the prime subject of the process.
This has the disadvantage that a new community member does not have a
single-point-of-contact (they /might/ have a regular sponsor, but not
all do and hunting around for sponsors is a tedious task for many).
What MJ Ray describes as "a file" above could well be
http://wiki.debian.org/JohnDoe, i.e. the personal wiki page of the new
community member. We could encourage people to record their progress in
Debian there - what packages they created/maintained/got-uploaded, what
bugs they fixed or patches they provided in other people's packages or
what else they did in the project (IRC op in a Debian channel, helping
out people in community forums, writing articles or otherwise advocating
Debian)
This might make life for AMs (and I believe for FD) easier, as it would
be easily possible to track progress via the wiki history.
I am not sure how the mentoring fits in here (should we have a dedicated
mentoring process where new community member have a specific mentor?
How should that mentor be selected? By some FD-like thing, or by mutual
agreement with a DD they know?)
> The split of AM and mentor may be useful, but there doesn't seem to be
> much need for it. At least AFAICS the problem with NM is mostly at the
> "waiting for DAM to create account" stage.
That's an issue at the other end of process.
Michael
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