also sprach Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> [2005.03.15.0015 +0100]: > But in any case, you really shouldn't be offended when people > suggest you follow the same path they did. I am not. I also want to reiterate that this is *not* about me. I have tons of emails in my read box by frustrated contributors or wannabe-contributors who claim not to have the technical knowledge to figure out how something works just from the source, but who would prefer to work their way backwards after seeing the whole picture once. The question is whether we want people helping out, or people spending their resources to figure out where to start. > ObDPLCampaign: I do think it'd be good to be able to attract > people to the project who aren't good at just diving into source > files and hacking away; and I think mentoring's the way to go > here. I agree with you. Interestingly, this mentoring has been addressed by quite a few of my sponsees as well as some other people responding to my posts in private, or writing to me with issues relating to my book. One of the most important issues that was raised throughout is that mentoring is a great idea, but lack of willing mentors is almost as bad as people who come across as condescending or arrogant when (rightfully) pointing at the source and telling people to RTFM. Mentoring *is* the way to go. However, I think it should be the mentors selecting the mentees, not the other way around. And in order to be able to identify promising mentees, they need the have a certain level of knowledge already. And it's exactly this bootstrapping of knowledge that a lot of people seem to be missing. I hope I am making sense. It's been a rough day and I am about to drop dead just to wake up before the sunrise tomorrow for the debate. -- Please do not send copies of list mail to me; I read the list! .''`. martin f. krafft <madduck@debian.org> : :' : proud Debian developer, admin, user, and author `. `'` `- Debian - when you have better things to do than fixing a system Invalid/expired PGP subkeys? Use subkeys.pgp.net as keyserver!
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