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On 02/05/2015 01:56 AM, Michał Górny wrote: |
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> Hello, everyone. |
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> |
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> It's finally time to discuss some of the recruitment issues. It's not |
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> a new complaint that the process is time-consuming and discouraging to |
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> our contributors. We have a pretty low number of new recruits [well, |
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> we could definitely have a higher number!] and too often they resign |
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> in the process. |
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> |
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> As I see it, the main issue are ebuild quizzes. They are very time- |
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> consuming and discouraging. It's like filling a quiz with relatively |
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> simple questions where answers need to fit a key, and you have to tell |
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> the recruit to fill in the missing bits a few times just to help him |
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> get further. |
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> |
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I thought the quizzes were kind of fun. They took a little while, but |
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only because I had to read and understand parts of the devmanual I'd |
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never looked at before. In hindsight, a few of the questions are stupid |
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and we still have some bugs in the devmanual, but I don't see the |
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quizzes as the highest barrier to entry. All of the answers are |
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literally written down for you, you just have to be able to RTFM -- a |
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valuable skill as a developer. |
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|
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For me the issue was finding a mentor. I work on a bunch of unrelated |
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stuff, and never interacted with one group of developers for very long. |
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So I felt it would be rude to pop into a chat root and ask someone to |
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spend 2 months of their time mentoring me. Fortunately I was bitching |
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about this on -user one day, and kensington & hasufell helped me find a |
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mentor. |
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|
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If there was a page listing people who really love mentoring and would |
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be glad if I bugged them about it, I would have started the process a |
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few years sooner. |
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