On Thu, Jul 02, 2009 at 07:55:38PM -0400, Daniel Kahn Gillmor wrote: > On 07/02/2009 06:56 PM, Tiago Bortoletto Vaz wrote: > > I don't > > feel confortable answering those question which I had to do some research to be > > able to write something > > Why? I happily researched all the questions during the NM process > before writing my responses, even for the questions i felt that i > already had answers to. It was an opportunity to conduct a deliberate > exploration of useful details, led by a helpful guide. I just bad expressed myself here. I meant questions I would *only* be able to say something about if I did a research. In other words, I think it's important to give the AM my previous/current experiences, even if it's next to zero. Imagine I've written in my first NM email I want to become a DD because I want to package libraries. Then I answer in a good way all the questions regarding libraries - by doing some research, because I've never did it before. So, don't you think is missing something here? For someone who wants to become a DD mainly to work in i18n infrastrucure, it would be ok just knowing the nice steps for packaging libraries. For prospective library packagers, it's not enough IMO. However, the questions by themselves don't make any difference between the one who knows and the one who really knows by previous experiences a given subject. > And writing the answers in my own words was useful too: i find that my > understanding after explaining an idea to a third party is always deeper > than after just reading someone else's framing of the idea. Writing > real answers to the questions encouraged me to go down that path. And > if i didn't understand one of the questions and i got stumped > researching it, i didn't feel it was wrong to ask for help or a pointer > for further reading. Agreed. > So I don't think the question and answer part of the NM process is (or > should be) a pop quiz. If we're going to frame it academically, I see > it as more of a study guide and a series of reports to an intelligent > advisor. I didn't see anyone proposing a pop quiz for NM process in this list. > The back-and-forth of the questions also establishes a baseline for > understanding how a person acts and interacts over sustained e-mail > contact, which is crucial to their future as a DD. Sure. > It would be a shame if this nuanced, human-oriented, skill-building > process were made into a checklist, a multiple-choice rigamarole, or a > way of "ranking" prospective DD's somehow. Why create a system that > would encourage smart but unethical people to game it? I'm trying to propose exactly the opposite. An AM gets more helpful information if the the applicant is *also* asked for his/her experiences on a given subject rather than *only* being asked for something like "Explain to me what a foo is". You get a kind of copy/paste reply, even with other words. Btw, it's good to see many questions have already a better format in the current NM. > This is *not* to say that the process shouldn't be improved. There is a > lot of unclear waiting at various stages, which is aggravating, and the > initial introduction to the process can be fairly unfriendly. But the > actual Q&A part is not the problem, from what i've seen. > > --dkg > Regards, -- Tiago Bortoletto Vaz http://tiagovaz.org 0xA504FECA - http://pgp.mit.edu
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