Re: Metaproblem, part 3

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

>> From: joaotavora@gmail.com (João Távora)
>> Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 10:27:49 +0000
>> Cc: esr@thyrsus.com, phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk, emacs-devel@gnu.org
>> 
>> As you pointed out, mentorship happens on emacs-devel and on
>> bug-gnu-emacs. But also as you pointed out, a lot of effort goes into
>> questions only tangentially related to Emacs.
>> 
>> The proposed mentoring would be targeted at first time code
>> contributions only and administered by anyone with a reasonably solid
>> grasp of Emacs's and GNU's red tape.
>> 
>> >From my (limited) perspective this is frequently channeled to Stefan,
>> who is really good at it, but is possibly overloaded.
>> 
>> So what is being proposed, or what at least what I understood from
>> Phillip's message, is that a new broad guideline is added to the top of
>> the contribution guide [1] reading something like:
>> 
>>   "If this is your first time contributing to Emacs, ask for a mentor on
>>   emacs-devel first. A mentor can be anyone who has contributed to Emacs
>>   at least once, and will guide you through the instructions [linked]
>>   below, as well as any extra documentation. He/she can also answer
>>   specific questions about copyright assignment, version control,
>>   changelogs, coding style, etc."
>
> OK, so how would this mentoring be different from what we have now?
> Does it happen in private email instead of on the list?  If it's still
> on the list, do we formally tell people stay out of the
> mentor/mentoree dialog and let the mentor alone handle that?  Or is
> the only difference that a specific person will step forward and say
> he/she will be the mentor for a particular J.R. Hacker, and all the
> rest should stay as it is today?
>
> IOW, I have a difficulty translating the above principles (with which
> I agree) into practical steps that need to be made, to make the
> procedure different from what it is now.  Can you please clarify?

A brief two cents to add to Phillip, who seems to be in exactly the same
position as me:

It would be nice to explicitly let posters know that they can ask
someone for help with implementing a feature/squashing a bug. There's
lots of helpful advice here and on emacs.help, but that's not quite the
same as knowing that someone has committed (to some extent) to assisting
you.

"Mentoring", to me, also implies that the purpose of the process is, in
large part, the education of the mentoreee.

The above is totally contingent on someone having the time and patience
to take on "students", and I think silence in response to a request for
mentoring should be quite normal.

I'd lean towards on-list discussions, with the assumption that most
people will ignore them.

Eric