Further to Sam's suggestion and observations below see Suggestion 0.1.8 at http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/IncubatorIssues2013#Suggestions
-----Original Message----- From: sa3r...@gmail.com [mailto:sa3r...@gmail.com] On Behalf Of Sam Ruby Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2015 7:26 AM To: general@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: Mentor disengagement - a suggestion On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 10:07 AM, Ted Dunning <ted.dunn...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 6:46 AM, Jim Jagielski <j...@jagunet.com> wrote: > >> My point is that with 1 mentor, everyone knows where the buck stops. >> With >1 nobody knows. A flat hierarchy for mentors does not seem >> workable or, at least, optimal. >> > > That's a fine point. > > But it is counter to my experience. > > For instance, on Kylin, I was extremely active early on. Lately, > Julian Hyde has taken much more of the questions. It has worked very > well. We have a third mentor (whose name I won't mention) who has > been nearly completely missing, but that hasn't been a problem since > everybody knows that they are totally MiA. > > >> If we wish to address this, and not "force" mentors to leave, we >> could simply add the idea of "lead mentor" and have the PPMC vote on >> which mentor they want to be the lead mentor (pseudo PPMC chair); the >> remaining mentors would remain as co-mentors but the intent is that >> the lead mentor would be the primary person responsible. >> > > I think that this is largely process without clear need. But others > may have different experience. The following is from the definition of "champion" on the incubator roles and responsibility page[1]: --- During incubation, the Champion: * Coordinates the creation and timely delivery of the podling's board reports. * Keeps an eye on the mentors' activity and takes action (ask for new mentors, talk to the Incubator PMC) if they don't seem to provide enough oversight or mentorship to the podling, --- First question: does this description match current practice. Second question: is there something in that description that needs to get done, but isn't getting done? There also is a separate thread about the number of podlings that the Incubator can handle. That number would tend to increase if some of the work were decentralized more. My take is that (at least for this month) Marvin is effectively doing the first bullet for all podlings. Now I don't see any signs of burnout in Marvin, so that's not the immediate concern, but scalability and sustainability would benefit from decentralizing this more. As to the second bullet, it isn't clear to me that that is being done. Even if it were only a one time thing, reverifying (or in many cases, naming) the champion for every podling, and then asking each to reverify the active status for every mentor for podlings that they champion might go a long way toward easing some of the concerns that people have raised. Ultimately the definition of champion, as posted, should match reality. - Sam Ruby [1] https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3a%2f%2fincubator.apache.org%2fincubation%2fRoles_and_Responsibilities.html%23Champion&data=01%7c01%7cRoss.Gardler%40microsoft.com%7c02e20d0e08f54f9c81f408d2d4a356cc%7c72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7c1&sdata=q10OQ8l3N4%2bAPk%2bXJYxZVF1mEREPIOYNpQcD9Frr0rI%3d --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: general-unsubscr...@incubator.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: general-h...@incubator.apache.org
