Re: [gentoo-project] Recruitment issues and potential improvement

[Michał Górny]

Dnia 2015-02-05, o godz. 22:05:55
Sergey Popov <pinkbyte@g.o> napisał(a):

> 05.02.2015 21:22, Michał Górny пишет:
> > Dnia 2015-02-05, o godz. 21:08:43
> > Mikle Kolyada <zlogene@g.o> napisał(a):
> >
> >>
> >> 05.02.2015 09:56, Michał Górny пишет:
> >>> Hello, everyone.
> >>>
> >>> It's finally time to discuss some of the recruitment issues. It's not
> >>> a new complaint that the process is time-consuming and discouraging to
> >>> our contributors. We have a pretty low number of new recruits [well,
> >>> we could definitely have a higher number!] and too often they resign
> >>> in the process.
> >>>
> >>> As I see it, the main issue are ebuild quizzes. They are very time-
> >>> consuming and discouraging. It's like filling a quiz with relatively
> >>> simple questions where answers need to fit a key, and you have to tell
> >>> the recruit to fill in the missing bits a few times just to help him
> >>> get further.
> >>>
> >>> I myself attempted ebuild quiz twice, because the first time I simply
> >>> ended up not having the time for it. My late recruit was making slow
> >>> progress, and recently vanished -- hopefully only because he doesn't
> >>> have will for that anymore. As I see it, the disadvantages outweigh
> >>> the benefits here.
> >>>
> >>> I have discussed this with kensington and a few Council members
> >>> (unofficially), and we came up with following ideas:
> >>>
> >>> 1. remove or reduce the ebuild quiz to a reasonable number of
> >>> questions. In other words, make it bearable. Focus on the stuff that
> >>> can't be checked otherwise.
> >>>
> >>> 2. Add an extra contribution period in which the candidate commits to
> >>> the tree through Pull Requests. Developers watch the requests, review
> >>> them and decide when the recruit is ready. We may extend this with
> >>> requirements like '3 different developers must review late activities
> >>> and evaluate them'.
> >>>
> >>> 3. Possibly extend the recruit-recruiter interaction. Rather than
> >>> treating the interrogation as some kind of final confirmation, make it
> >>> a small extra part of the learning process. In other words, reduce
> >>> the other parts, fill in the blanks here.
> >>>
> >>> What do you think?
> >>>
> >> I try to be short.
> >> First of all, i'm against to make quizzes simpler or shorter. I have few
> >> real examples, when people do a LOT of mistakes even after they passed
> >> the quizzes.
> >
> > And how people doing mistakes *after* passing the quizzes proves that
> > quizzes are good? As I see it, this just proves that they don't do
> > their job.
> >
>
> Because quizes lacks some questions? You see - we should not shorten
> them, but on the contrary - increase the question's number.
>
> So, that's a not good argument. Quizes may be flawed, but not in the way
> of 'over complicated', definitely.

Sure. If the quizzes take so much nobody will bother writing them,
there will be no more bad developers in Gentoo!

> >>> Add an extra contribution period in which the candidate commits to
> >> the tree through Pull Requests.
> >>
> >> All mentors should track their recruits during first month. If mentor
> >> doesn't do this, this is "bad" mentor, IMO. It looks like some mentors
> >> think *ok, my mentee passed the quizzes, he is a developer, i can to
> >> nothing*
> >
> > This happens *after* being recruited. What I'm talking, there should be
> > more focus on doing and judging actual contributions before all that
> > formal crap.
> >
>
> Yep. And, guess, who is responsible for that? Mentor. Tadaaam! :-)

You still don't get my point. My point is: if a recruit has proven me
(and possibly some other developers) that he can use grep, sed, awk,
whatever just fine, why does he have to bother answering some stupid
quiz question?

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny