On 15 January 2012 12:12, Jukka Zitting <jukka.zitt...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, > > On Sun, Jan 15, 2012 at 11:49 AM, ant elder <ant.el...@gmail.com> wrote: >> I accept there might be some poddlings where the mentors are AWOL but >> most of the ones I know of the mentors are actually paying attention >> but there is only so much mentors can do if the poddling isn't very >> active. > > Right, a mentor that just takes care of the responsibilities described > in [1] can't do much in such a case. However, a mentor with experience > in growing open source communities and willingness to share it (plus > the required time and energy) can do much more. Projects like PDFBox > or River are living examples of how active mentoring can turn around > the fortunes of a project.
Perhaps we should hold these up as examples of what mentors can do. Is it possible to document what was done in 500 words or so? (reading on in your mail I see you make this very suggestion - so we are in agreement here) > Or we could form a "community building > task force" of say a few volunteers who could be called in to help > podlings that have trouble with this. Or something else; I think > there's a lot of opportunities for improvement here. This is similar to what I want to propose when I have had time to put it together. I think we have made a mistake here in assuming that building communities in new projects is the same as building communities in existing projects. Being a part of a successful ASF project means we understand policy but it does not mean we understand community building. So when a project that has not yet proven itself finds it is having difficulty building community our mentors often do not know what to do. The end result is a "sit and wait" approach - it works at those ASF projects we work on that are TLPs after all. The interesting thing is that this approach and the restructuring others are suggesting are not mutually exclusive. I promise more detailed thoughts at some point in the future. In the meantime I'd like to hear peoples thoughts about Jukka's "task force" approach. Ross > > [1] > http://incubator.apache.org/incubation/Roles_and_Responsibilities.html#Mentor > > BR, > > Jukka Zitting > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org > -- Ross Gardler (@rgardler) Programme Leader (Open Development) OpenDirective http://opendirective.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
