Re: Four days
On Tue, 5 Oct 2010 06:30:22 +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 04, 2010 at 11:42:59AM -0400, Michael Gilbert wrote:
> > On Mon, 04 Oct 2010 11:35:04 +1100, Ben Finney wrote:
> > > Michael Gilbert <michael.s.gilbert@gmail.com> writes:
> > >
> > > > As someone who has attempted to go through the mentoring process, I
> > > > agree very much that it is rather depressing.
> > >
> > > How much of that is actually a problem, though? How much is an integral
> > > part of gaining humility as to the state of the packaging work, and the
> > > pain of learning new conventions and processes?
> >
> > The depressing part is that almost no one is interested in being a
> > mentor,
>
> A state which isn't helped by the regular complaint that "there's nobody to
> sponsor my packageeeeeees!". When I *do* sponsor something, I'm pretty much
> guaranteed to get at least one (other) person e-mail me personally with an
> RFS that's never seen the light of day here, and it's pretty much always for
> something I'd never touch (for some reason, it seems I see a lot of Java
> packages that way). Neither state of affairs encourages me to sponsor
> anything.
>
> > so its almost impossible to get your work into Debian, which
> > makes the effort seem pointless.
>
> Because having a nice package you can use yourself or put on a website
> somewhere has *no* value at all, naturally.
>
> > Note that I've actually succeeded many
> > times, but I've also failed many times as well. And the failures are
> > all due to lack of an interested mentor, not due to package quality (a
> > bunch of my packages are on mentors.debian.net and lintian clean).
>
> Those are not the be-all and end-all gauges of quality.
Of course, but if there are actually problems in my packages, I've
addressed them rapidly. At this point, I have no outstanding issues
other than lack of an interested mentor.
> > I think that the efficiency of mentoring is the problem that needs to
> > be solved. That could possibly be improved by treating mentoring tasks
> > as bugs. It may also possibly be improved by treating mentoring as a
> > team task. I see the complaint that DDs choose not to mentor because
> > they end up stuck with unmaintained packages. Well, it would be less
> > of a burden if those were team maintained (make new mentees part of
> > those teams as well).
>
> Because packages that are unmaintained by a team that are indifferent are
> not any different, practially speaking, than those that are unmaintained by
> one person who is indifferent.
That's not the point I was making. The idea would be to form a mentors
team that includes all mentors that act as a collaborative mentor,
rather than an individual mentor. This would of course help the
quickly orphaned package issue.
> > Maybe mentorship should be a team effort? Start
> > a new group of mentees every month that work together perhaps?
>
> Yeah, that's a great idea! We should setup a mailing list where they can
> get together and ask questions of each other and request someone to sponsor
> their packages!
What's so crazy about that? What would be so wrong with empowering
mentees to help themselves? Especially when there are so many
complaints from DDs not having time themselves. Change the DD role to
watching the mentees work together, and only step in when needed. This
also would help the quickly orphaned package issue since packages will
come in with group maintainership right away.
Anyway, I'm thinking about how to improve this rather depressing
situation. It doesn't help my motivation when I get my ideas shot down
just because they're new/different.
Mike
Reply to: