Re: GOP-PROP 2: mentors and Frogs

[Graham Percival]

On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 12:44:49PM +0100, Graham Percival wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 08:23:00AM +0100, Trevor Daniels wrote:
> > I'm not convinced we need a Frog Meister.  Anyone capable
> > of developing a patch to LilyPond code is capable of uploading
> > it to Reitveld.  Any help required could be given on the list by
> > any of the contributors.
> 
> Frog Meister, under this (re)interpretation, is more of a social
> position than a technical one.

Maybe I should have specified "social and organizational".  And
maybe we should call them "managers" rather than "mentors".

> Perfect example: two weeks ago, issue 1630 chord autosplit  was
> almost finished (it only needed a few minor code formatting).

At the risk (or certainty) of being completely immodest, I shall
put myself forward as a "perfect example" of what I envision by a
"mentor/manager".


I don't care about chords, let alone chords inside a
Completion_heads_engraver.  Nor do I know how the tie engraver
works, or engravers in general.  This issue is not a problem for
me, nor do I expect to ever benefit from this bugfix in person.
I've never reviewed the technical aspects of issue 1630.

But I think I was an excellent mentor for Janek on that in the
past 2 days.  Even if I don't care about a patch, I can still
pretend to care about it.  (at the end it was kind-of Janek
working and me mentoring, rather than Karin/Janek)

- I prompted him to contact Karin
- I discussed some non-technical issues (indentation)
- I commiserated (off-list) with him about various problems in the
  community.
- when he (and Karin) had obviously gone beyond the call of duty,
  I stepped forward and spent 15 minutes finishing off the
  non-technical issues.
- above all else, I tried to keep things "moving".  When something
  got stuck, I investigated and either fixed it, or tried to put
  him/them in touch with people who _could_ fix it.


I think that most new contributors would benefit *enormously* from
having a dedicated person who does those things.  Whether we call
them mentors or managers or big brothers or sempai/kouhai or
whatever.

Cheers,
- Graham