Date: Thu, 27 Apr 1995 08:54:21 +1000 (EST) From: Gary Roberts <gary@wcs.uq.oz.au> To: faulkner@mpd.tandem.com (Boyd Faulkner) Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.org (FreeBSD Hackers) Subject: Re: The Mentors' Club (was Re: Gating hackers ... ) Message-ID: <9504262254.AA21404@wcs.uq.edu.au> In-Reply-To: <9504261319.AA05936@olympus> from "Boyd Faulkner" at Apr 26, 95 08:19:32 am
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Boyd Faulkner writes: > My belief is that the newbie is better served and the mentor is more > interested in mentoring if the setups are similar. I cannot test my > ideas on certain hardware before trying to illuminate the client and > jerking him around on a chain isn't going to give him a warm fuzzy. > > It is my intention that the newbie get passed on the first request. > If we get a hardware list from the newbie and share one among ourselves, > we can reroute the newbie coreectly on the first try and the guy trying > to get his GUS MAX to work can talk to a guy that has one. This makes > us look better. It will make them feel better. I'm not concerned about > not knowing the answer. I am concerned about being able to work on > questions I have the facilities to research and test. It doesn't have > to be a perfect match, just a fair one. Thanks for the further comments. I hear what you are saying and it makes a *lot* of sense. Initially, to get started without a huge delay, we may not be able to match newbies and mentors too well on any particular criterion. Matching on hardware would be great and so would matching on software interests, type of net access, amount of experience, etc, etc. I think this thing will develop, perhaps from a simple model like Rod is imploring us to adopt, and rough matching on hardware should be high on the list of features to be added. Initially, I suspect we may have to use the approach of a mentor `passing the buck' at the first contact if he feels that the newbies problem is beyond his scope of expertise or interests. In that regard it will be important for me to design the instructions that are sent to the newbie so that he fully describes his system when he first asks for help. Your idea of a register of `mentor setups' to share among ourselves is a good one. Could I impose on you to design an appropriate `fill-in' type questionaire that I could send to all mentors and get them to record their set-ups and interests? I could continue to send that form by e-mail to each new mentor as part of the acknowledgement. The sum of all such responses could be kept somewhere for mentors to download if they needed. Your feedback is very useful, and appreciated. Cheers, -- Gary Roberts (gary@wcs.uq.edu.au) (Ph +617 844 0400 Fax +617 844 0444) 4th Floor, South Bank House, 234 Grey St, South Bank QLD 4101 Australia.
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?9504262254.AA21404>