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

[Sergey Popov]

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.

>>> 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! :-)

-- 
Best regards, Sergey Popov
Gentoo developer
Gentoo Desktop-effects project lead
Gentoo Quality Assurance project lead
Gentoo Proxy maintainers project lead