On 17 December 2012 09:40, Michał Górny <mgo...@gentoo.org> wrote: > On Sun, 16 Dec 2012 19:10:06 -0500 > Michael Orlitzky <mich...@orlitzky.com> wrote: > >> > Parts of this docs are outdated but this does not matter. Get >> > involved, fix bugs, help people and someone will ask you to join. Or >> > look for a mentor. >> >> If your recruitment process is "fix bugs for years and maybe someone >> will notice you, maybe not," then nobody is going to bother. There needs >> to be a clear, step-by-step process. This guy posted a graph the other day: >> >> http://hwoarang.silverarrow.org/wp-content/uploads/recruitment_stats.png > > I don't think a single graph is 'good enough' for the complexity > of the problem. I probably do count to the 'gave up' no in the earlier > years, yet I finally made it the other year. I wonder how many others > like me are there. > >> People aren't bothering. It's not because of any fundamental problem -- >> it's because the process is obscure and potentially a waste of time. > > I agree with that. The process takes a lot of time for a minor benefit, > and most of it doesn't prove really helpful. I think the process should > mostly prove that someone is able to find and read docs, write ebuilds > and understand the major concepts. > > Honestly, I see no reason to ask recruits for a lot of things we do > right now. There's no point in telling them to summarize a large piece > of the docs. From my personal experience, there is a lot of things which > you learn and then forget because you don't need them for a long time. > > -- > Best regards, > Michał Górny
Somehow you need to make sure they actually read part of the docs and they will not commit random bits just because they though "this was the correct way to do it". We are all people, and sometimes it's easier to assume something is right than actually investigating whether your assumption was right or not. And frankly, many mentors nowadays don't pay much attention in training their recruits. They just do a very limited quiz review and hand them to recruiters. I have interviewed a few people where they did not know basic stuff, like local use flags go to metadata.xml and not local.use.desc anymore etc and that's because their mentors did a very very bad job in preparing them. Be a responsible mentor, train them well, and the recruitment will be much faster than you might expect. -- Regards, Markos Chandras / Gentoo Linux Developer / Key ID: B4AFF2C2
