Peter Kupfer OOo wrote:
We have to find a balance. Each feature that we require/expect our
volunteers to use makes the project a little more daunting. We need to
decide whether the benefit from the feature is worth the higher
barrier for newcommers. In the case of using notes, I think it's
definitely worth doing. In the case of the notes vs comments
distinction, I don't think it's worth it.
I wish there was a way to gradually warm users to new features. So,
when someone joins the only hear about Insert > Notes, but when they
are very confortable with the project we start talking about Edit >
Changes > Comments.
I thought about this some in the last 12 hours and I think that you
don't really appreciate the difference until you are an
author/maintainer and have to actually go through someone else's changes.
So, maybe the at the point where someone moves from being a reviewer to
a writer would be the first time we would suggest they try to do it the
other way. If we do implement some kind of mentoring thing, this would
be fairly simple. The persons mentor would just mention this to them
when they write their first chapter.
If we don't have a formalized mentoring process, then maybe we could
have a document somewhere for the "advanced members". I don't know what
the best way to do it, but as time goes on newbies, who are engrossed in
the project, will be able to handle more complex tasks and things, and I
think it is obligation (maybe that is strong, but I feel obliged) to
teach them better reviewing techniques. It benefits them and the project.
This is the first comment that stated the reason why not to use a
certain tool, the authour has more work. All the comments, to me,
where about if the neophyte could properly utilize the 2 ways of doing
things. The best would be to ask the neophyte. (Remember the
discussion on how many teeth there are in a horse's mouth, no one went
to count the teeth.)
I think that the greeter could step the neophyte through some basic
things, like finding stuff on the web site, what is expected on
downloading and uploading, maybe even a practice of doing such. Then
introduce the neophyte to a number of the 'tools' and practice using the
tools on a sample or so.
Then, I think that an advanced member, a writer, should take a neophyte
and ask that person to review the work of said writer, guide the
neo-reviewer through what is expected. Also, maybe two neo-reviewers
could hook up and swap lies about reviewing. After, working with the
neo-reviewer, the writer should pass the responsibility onto another
writer, this may round out the experiences for the neo-reviewer.
The daunting things to me were finding the thing to review, next finding
out the writer was very experienced, then trying to figure not only what
to do but how to do it. I didnot change too much but ended up asking
question (Notes or comments I forget) on why was such and such done,
should not this be consistent with another place etc. I think that what
I did was helpful.
Chris
- Re: [authors] Mentoring needed Chris BONDE
-
