Abhilash Raj writes: > Hi,I have a pretty good understand of the mailman core, I would > love to co-mentor any project if I am allowed?
You're allowed. Lots of former students (and the occasional current student as well!) are mentors. Some of the following my sound harsh, and it is my private opinion; I don't speak for Mailman or for GSoC. I expose it on this list because there may be others lurking with the ambition to be a mentor, and they're in similar situation to you in many ways. I'm not opposed making you a formal mentor (that's not my decision, but my opinion will surely be input to it), but I'm not very positive right now. I have had only very sporadic contact with you since GSoC last year. No explanations needed, it's just a fact, and it's two- sided issue, anyway. I just want you to know where you stand -- it is not a criticism of *you*, and it's not a "decision". To be a formal mentor (and "get the stupid T-shirt" :-), you will need to establish a presence with at least one, preferably several of the current mentors. We need confidence that you'll be available to the student when she/he gets in trouble. Not 100%, but a mentor or co-mentor who doesn't contribute much and then disappears halfway is a really bad thing, and we especially need confidence that you'll be around at deadline time (there's no administrative difference between mentor and co-mentor: both can edit the evaluation forms, both can see the same student data), because you may need to do the evaluation if your co-mentor is unavailable. On the other hand, informally, if you want to mentor, just start. <wink/> Your goal should be to make it clear that we can't dispense with your advice on a project we want to implement. Then we *have* to make you an official mentor! (I'm not sure if there's a deadline on that.) Of course "indispensible" is a *very* high standard, but the advice to just start mentoring (on-list) is the best you're going to get. The more of that you do, the better we know you. Including your faults -- having your faults known IS AN ADVANTAGE because that way we can give you a good teammate who has strengths there! Other things you can do: participate in the sprints at PyCon. Most of the mentors will be sprinting. I can't go myself, but will participate by IRC and email, and try to do work in advance so it's easily available to the onsite sprinters. Of course general development work, submitting patches, and discussing them publicly is useful. But in the end, the most effective path is to show that you *are* a mentor, by doing it! _______________________________________________ Mailman-Developers mailing list Mailman-Developers@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-developers Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-developers%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-developers/archive%40jab.org Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9