[followups to d-newmaint please]
[Matthew Palmer]
> Making NM more of a mentoring+monitoring thing, instead of The Essay
> Test From Hell, would be a Great Thing. It appears that other AMs
> aren't entirely against the idea, either.
People keep complaining about the Essay Test from Hell, but I guess I
still don't quite see the problem. Who is it that doesn't like it? Is
it AMs that feel it's too much work on top of their other duties to get
to know an applicant's skill level? Is it the competent applicants who
feel it's beneath them? Or is it incompetent applicants who feel
intimidated by all the hard concepts to look up?
I was rather looking forward to the ETfH part, once I qualify for NM in
the first place, which is obviously still well in the future. Those
templates (at least as of a long time ago when I perused them) cover
such a wide range of material that demonstrating one's knowledge of
everything by one's direct actions would take *forever*. Sure, it's
possible to cheat by cutting/pasting answers from someone else (or from
google), but really it's possible to cheat on *any* NM material that
isn't conducted via live chat.[1]
I guess I'm not actually opposed to the idea of making people *do* all
the things they are currently only *asked* about - I am just curious
about who is clamoring for this, and why.
[1] Having a T&S "exam" conducted over, say, IRC privmsg, is something
I'd be more than willing to go through, because that'd be a *really
good* way to get a feel for how well I know my stuff. But I
understand it would be a huge time sink for the AM, compared to the
alternatives.
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