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Posted to general@incubator.apache.org by Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com> on 2018/05/30 01:08:36 UTC
Re: [DISCUSS] Absent mentors
Hi,
Taking a closer look at the data [1] (only accessible by IPMC and ASF members sorry) it may be a good idea to split the mentors/podlings into groups and draft a different email for each? For instance:
- Mentors who are not signing off reports at all or only occasionally
- Mentors who have missed a few as they it looks like they have too many podlings on their plate
- Podlings that have a less that 50% (say) sign off rate
Thanks,
Justin
1. https://whimsy.apache.org/incubator/signoff.cgi#bypodling
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Re: [DISCUSS] Absent mentors
Posted by Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com>.
Hi,
> Alternately I could take 10 mentors at random if any of them are active on their mailing lists, I’m guessing there a strong correlation between not signing off reports and absent mentors.
A data point. Not mentioning any names but I checked a single mentor who had not recently signed-off reports in 10 podlings that had a low sign off rate, of those mentors 7 had no email to the lists in the last 6 months, 2 had sent a single email and one is active to a limited extent.
Thanks,
Justin
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Re: [DISCUSS] Absent mentors
Posted by Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com>.
Hi,
> I believe that asking all mentors to sign off is a change in policy or at least in practice. (Neither the “Mentors’ guide”[1] nor the “Guide to being a mentor”[2] talks about signing off.)
See [1] I’d say "and report its status” covers signing off reports.
Thanks,
Justin
1. https://incubator.apache.org/policy/roles_and_responsibilities.html#mentor
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Re: [DISCUSS] Absent mentors
Posted by Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com>.
Hi,
> Thanks for doing this, Justin. It must have taken quite a while.
Not as long as you may think due to pony mail's ability to search multiple lists at once. However it can be in some cases hard to match names and not every one uses their email address recorded against their name.
> Just curious: As you were reviewing lists looking for mentor activity,
> did you learn anything about patterns of mentor behavior? Are there
> any lessons we can learn?
I was only looking at people we thought might have low levels of activity so that may skew things a little.
I noticed a couple of minor things:
- Some mentors are only active in a podlings starts up phase (but that's probably still a useful thing)
- There a number of mentors that look to have taken on too many podling and are spread a bit thinly
- Some mentors only seem to turn up to vote +1 on things with little or no other activity
- A couple of mentors are quite active but don’t sign off reports
I also noticed that recently discussions around this here have seen to woken up a few mentors. :-)
Thanks,
Justin
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Re: [DISCUSS] Absent mentors
Posted by Julian Hyde <jh...@apache.org>.
Thanks for doing this, Justin. It must have taken quite a while.
You've convinced me that missing sign-off is a reasonable proxy for
mentor disengagement.
Just curious: As you were reviewing lists looking for mentor activity,
did you learn anything about patterns of mentor behavior? Are there
any lessons we can learn?
Julian
On Mon, Sep 3, 2018 at 7:36 PM Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> So I went through the tedious task of checking activity on the mailing list in the last 6 months for all possible absent mentors (being those who have missed a number of reports). I may of made some mistakes but it look like that missing 3 reports n a row correlates quite well with mentors being absent. (about 80% or so).
>
> While this doesn’t tell who is just signing off report and otherwise being absent but I think that a good start.
>
> Thanks,
> Justin
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Re: [DISCUSS] Absent mentors
Posted by Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com>.
Hi,
> That’s a pretty good correlation. If the process is not too tedious then maybe the incubator should trigger a look into the situation and finding replacement mentors.
That’s the idea :-)
> Maybe a 7 day ACK to the Mentor. “It looks like you are no longer able to mentor <podling>. We understand that you are a volunteer and circumstances may be fluid. Let us know immediately if this is not so and if you would like to continue as a mentor to <podling>. Otherwise we will seek a replacement from the IPMC and Apache Membership”
Thanks for that. I’ve already suggested some text to send mentors earlier in this thread, we can add/adapt the above to add to it, when we get that that point I’ll start a new thread as we’ve probably lost some people in this one due to it’s length.
Thanks,
Justin
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Re: [DISCUSS] Absent mentors
Posted by Dave Fisher <da...@comcast.net>.
Hi Justin,
Thanks!
That’s a pretty good correlation. If the process is not too tedious then maybe the incubator should trigger a look into the situation and finding replacement mentors.
Maybe a 7 day ACK to the Mentor. “It looks like you are no longer able to mentor <podling>. We understand that you are a volunteer and circumstances may be fluid. Let us know immediately if this is not so and if you would like to continue as a mentor to <podling>. Otherwise we will seek a replacement from the IPMC and Apache Membership”
Regards,
Dave
Regards,
Dave
Sent from my iPhone
> On Sep 3, 2018, at 7:36 PM, Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> So I went through the tedious task of checking activity on the mailing list in the last 6 months for all possible absent mentors (being those who have missed a number of reports). I may of made some mistakes but it look like that missing 3 reports n a row correlates quite well with mentors being absent. (about 80% or so).
>
> While this doesn’t tell who is just signing off report and otherwise being absent but I think that a good start.
>
> Thanks,
> Justin
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Re: [DISCUSS] Absent mentors
Posted by Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com>.
Hi,
So I went through the tedious task of checking activity on the mailing list in the last 6 months for all possible absent mentors (being those who have missed a number of reports). I may of made some mistakes but it look like that missing 3 reports n a row correlates quite well with mentors being absent. (about 80% or so).
While this doesn’t tell who is just signing off report and otherwise being absent but I think that a good start.
Thanks,
Justin
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Re: [DISCUSS] Absent mentors
Posted by Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com>.
Hi,
For those interested here are the numbers of possible absent mentors by podling, again this may contain mistakes. If you listed here and your mentors are active again you have my apologies in advance, but if your mentors are absent please speak up. That goes for if you are a mentor on a project and could do with a bit more help.
No Podling
5 gearpump
4 nemo
3 weex
3 toree
3 spot
3 slider
3 singa
3 sdap
3 rya
3 omid
3 netbeans
3 mxnet
3 joshua
3 hivemall
3 heron
3 annotator
2 tephra
2 taverna
2 superset
2 skywalking
2 senssoft
2 samoa
2 s2graph
2 openwisk
2 odftoolkit
2 milagro
2 livy
2 htrace
2 griffin
2 echarts
2 datafu
2 batchee
2 ariatosca
1 wave
1 unomi
1 tamaya
1 soma
1 servicecomb
1 ratius
1 ratis
1 quickstep
1 qucikcstep
1 pulsar
1 ponymail
1 plc4x
1 pagespeed
1 myriad
1 livyedgent
1 imparla
1 impala
1 h2trace
1 gossip
1 gobklin
1 freemarker
1 edgent
1 dubbo
1 druid
1 daffodil
1 crail
1 amaterasu
1 airflow
Thanks,
Justin
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Re: [DISCUSS] Absent mentors
Posted by Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com>.
Hi,
I made a list of possible inactive mentors here based on how often they sign off board reports [1]. It may contain mistakes so apologies in advance if your name is listed and you are actually active in the podling listed. There are 78 names listed of those 50 have not checked off any board reports recently, the other 18 may be reasonably or occasionally active but I don’t know. Hopefully this will show how poor a metric of signing off reports is :-)
Note that some mentors may be active in one podling but not in others and where that is the case I’ve just listed the possible inactive podling(s).There's some well know names there and I think some people may just be a little over worked / have taken on a little too much. That may not be healthy long term for them or their podlings. This are 19 people I’ve listed as possibly having too many podlings.
If IPMC members could double check and filled in if they (or others) are actually active or not that would be a great help. Also feel free to add comments or any other information that you think is useful.
Thanks,
Justin
1. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oR2kymzDTLOy-P-QLYM1wlHFES6LG9X-V2SMgwohvR4/edit?usp=sharing
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Re: [DISCUSS] Absent mentors
Posted by Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com>.
Hi,
> [2] https://community.apache.org/guide-to-being-a-mentor.html <https://community.apache.org/guide-to-being-a-mentor.html>
BTW this link refer to another mentorship program, not being a mentor of a podling.
Thanks,
Justin
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Re: [DISCUSS] Absent mentors
Posted by Julian Hyde <jh...@apache.org>.
I hear what you’re saying. As a metric it’s better than nothing, but let’s not assume it is telling us everything.
I believe that asking all mentors to sign off is a change in policy or at least in practice. (Neither the “Mentors’ guide”[1] nor the “Guide to being a mentor”[2] talks about signing off.) This could be a useful opportunity to remind mentors of what is expected of them.
One gray area has always bugged me. How hard should mentors push a podling to submit a report? If the podling fails to submit a report, or submits it late, it is impossible for mentors to sign off, and therefore counts as a black mark against the mentors. I believe that mentors should facilitate and guide, but pushing and nagging is counterproductive.
Julian
[1] https://incubator.apache.org/guides/mentor.html <https://incubator.apache.org/guides/mentor.html>
[2] https://community.apache.org/guide-to-being-a-mentor.html <https://community.apache.org/guide-to-being-a-mentor.html>
> On Sep 1, 2018, at 5:14 PM, Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
>> There is a strong presumption here that a mentor is fulfilling their duty if and only if they sign the reports.
>
> It’s an imperfect metric but one we have easy access to. If we send out an email asking for if you’re AWOL and a mentor responds that they are active then all is good. Of course it’s not going to catch mentors who sign reports and do nothing else but I hope there’s only a few incidences of that.
>
>> I’m skeptical. I can think of cases where an engaged mentor does not sign reports (because someone else has done it), and vice versa where a disengaged mentor shows up once a quarter to sign the report.
>
> IMO The reports should be signed off by all mentors where possible not just one or two, that way the mentor only signing reports (and doing nothing else) is less of an issue.
>
>> It may be a bit more difficult to measure, but I think a better indicator would be the number of messages sent by the mentor to dev and private lists. It indicates both time spent writing the message and also time spent keeping up with the email traffic to know when the podling needs help.
>
> Given we have 100+ people to check and some of them are involved in multiple projects, that’s a lot of lists to check but it would be possible. I could put it up in a shared doc and if other people help out then it wouldn’t be too much effort.
>
> Alternately I could take 10 mentors at random if any of them are active on their mailing lists, I’m guessing there a strong correlation between not signing off reports and absent mentors.
>
> Thanks,
> Justin
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Re: [DISCUSS] Absent mentors
Posted by Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com>.
Hi,
> There is a strong presumption here that a mentor is fulfilling their duty if and only if they sign the reports.
It’s an imperfect metric but one we have easy access to. If we send out an email asking for if you’re AWOL and a mentor responds that they are active then all is good. Of course it’s not going to catch mentors who sign reports and do nothing else but I hope there’s only a few incidences of that.
> I’m skeptical. I can think of cases where an engaged mentor does not sign reports (because someone else has done it), and vice versa where a disengaged mentor shows up once a quarter to sign the report.
IMO The reports should be signed off by all mentors where possible not just one or two, that way the mentor only signing reports (and doing nothing else) is less of an issue.
> It may be a bit more difficult to measure, but I think a better indicator would be the number of messages sent by the mentor to dev and private lists. It indicates both time spent writing the message and also time spent keeping up with the email traffic to know when the podling needs help.
Given we have 100+ people to check and some of them are involved in multiple projects, that’s a lot of lists to check but it would be possible. I could put it up in a shared doc and if other people help out then it wouldn’t be too much effort.
Alternately I could take 10 mentors at random if any of them are active on their mailing lists, I’m guessing there a strong correlation between not signing off reports and absent mentors.
Thanks,
Justin
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Re: [DISCUSS] Absent mentors
Posted by Julian Hyde <jh...@apache.org>.
There is a strong presumption here that a mentor is fulfilling their duty if and only if they sign the reports.
I’m skeptical. I can think of cases where an engaged mentor does not sign reports (because someone else has done it), and vice versa where a disengaged mentor shows up once a quarter to sign the report.
It may be a bit more difficult to measure, but I think a better indicator would be the number of messages sent by the mentor to dev and private lists. It indicates both time spent writing the message and also time spent keeping up with the email traffic to know when the podling needs help.
Julian
> On Aug 31, 2018, at 5:45 PM, Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Coming back to this old thread and coming up with some simple draft emails. Feedback welcome.
>
>> Taking a closer look at the data [1] (only accessible by IPMC and ASF members sorry) it may be a good idea to split the mentors/podlings into groups and draft a different email for each? For instance:
>
>> - Mentors who are not signing off reports at all or only occasionally
>
> (sent to mentor)
>
> I can see you are are the mentor of XXX and haven’t been signing off reports on a frequent basis. Life happens and things change and you may no longer be in the position to be able to put in the same effort that you once did to mentor this podling. If that is the case perhaps you would consider stepping down as mentor and/or help find the podling another mentor.
>
> By my rough count there about 90 mentors :-( who are in this position.
>
>> - Mentors who have missed a few as they it looks like they have too many podlings on their plate
>
> (sent to mentor)
>
> I can see you are are the mentor of XXX, YYY and ZZZ and haven’t been signing off all reports on a frequent basis. While we appreciate your enthusiasm for helping out at the incubator PMC, perhaps you’ve got busy with other things or you've just taken on too many podlings to mentor. Would it be better for you and your podlings if you cut back a little on the number you mentor and let someone else handle the load?
>
> By my rough count there about 15 mentors who are in this position.
>
>> - Podlings that have a less that 50% (say) sign off rate
>
>
> (sent to dev or private list)
>
> It looks like your mentors haven’t been signing off board reports as much as they should. Can you tell us if your mentors are still active or if you need help in any other way?
>
> By my rough count there about 30 podlings who are in this position. That more than half the current podlings.
>
> Those numbers are a lot larger that I expected, but I think we've known that. So they emails might get some mentors re-engaged and they may get some mentors to resign. The question may be where do we find mentors to help podlings out if a large number do decide to step down.
>
> Thanks,
> Justin
>
> 1. https://whimsy.apache.org/incubator/signoff.cgi#bypodling
>
>
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Re: [DISCUSS] Absent mentors
Posted by Justin Mclean <ju...@classsoftware.com>.
Hi,
Coming back to this old thread and coming up with some simple draft emails. Feedback welcome.
> Taking a closer look at the data [1] (only accessible by IPMC and ASF members sorry) it may be a good idea to split the mentors/podlings into groups and draft a different email for each? For instance:
> - Mentors who are not signing off reports at all or only occasionally
(sent to mentor)
I can see you are are the mentor of XXX and haven’t been signing off reports on a frequent basis. Life happens and things change and you may no longer be in the position to be able to put in the same effort that you once did to mentor this podling. If that is the case perhaps you would consider stepping down as mentor and/or help find the podling another mentor.
By my rough count there about 90 mentors :-( who are in this position.
> - Mentors who have missed a few as they it looks like they have too many podlings on their plate
(sent to mentor)
I can see you are are the mentor of XXX, YYY and ZZZ and haven’t been signing off all reports on a frequent basis. While we appreciate your enthusiasm for helping out at the incubator PMC, perhaps you’ve got busy with other things or you've just taken on too many podlings to mentor. Would it be better for you and your podlings if you cut back a little on the number you mentor and let someone else handle the load?
By my rough count there about 15 mentors who are in this position.
> - Podlings that have a less that 50% (say) sign off rate
(sent to dev or private list)
It looks like your mentors haven’t been signing off board reports as much as they should. Can you tell us if your mentors are still active or if you need help in any other way?
By my rough count there about 30 podlings who are in this position. That more than half the current podlings.
Those numbers are a lot larger that I expected, but I think we've known that. So they emails might get some mentors re-engaged and they may get some mentors to resign. The question may be where do we find mentors to help podlings out if a large number do decide to step down.
Thanks,
Justin
1. https://whimsy.apache.org/incubator/signoff.cgi#bypodling
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