Re: not being elected?

[Lucas Nussbaum <lucas@debian.org>]

On 18/03/13 at 12:03 +0100, Ana Guerrero wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 12:41:05PM +0100, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> >
> > Tasks I am quite sure I will do are:
> (...)
> > - investigate the "localization" of -mentors@ and #-mentors. Language is often
> >   a barrier for new contributors. That sounds like a low-hanging fruit.
> 
> Could you elaborate more since you seem to believe this is a "low-hanging
> fruit"?
> There are already resources in Debian by language. Some communities use 
> it more than others. So far I haven't seen anybody being pushed away to 
> ask a newbie development question in debian-devel-french@ or 
> debian-devel-spanish@.

At least for debian-devel-french@, I don't think that we advertise the
possibility to ask questions there.

> I expect it to be similar in other languages 
> mailing list. We have a few of them, see [1]. More list can be created if 
> a group ask the listmasters and our policy to create IRC channels is totally
> non burocratic (As we have no policy).

I'm not sure we need another list for that, given the low traffic (and
spanish looks similar)

> Mentoring works better when the mentor and the mentee are speaking in their
> natives languages, but ultimately to participate in Debian people need a 
> minimal knowledge of written English...

Sure, but making one's first steps in Debian is also very difficult. So
I think that every possible way to simplify that first step is a good
thing.

So, if I'm not elected, I will probably:
- see if it's considered OK to direct french contributors to
  debian-devel-french@ (I guess it will be OK)
- see if a few french contributors besides me would agree to answer
  questions on IRC, and create #-mentors-fr if that's the case
  (#-devel-fr is quite active, so it's better not to add more "noise"
  there)
- advertise this (blog, packaging tutorial, etc.)
- provide feedback to the project after a few weeks/months, so that
  others can possibly make the same move

This sounds like a rather simple step to make, hence my "low-hanging
fruit" qualifier.

Lucas