Neil, I am writing to let you and the list and all sponsorees who may be reading this thread know that I don’t agree with most of what you’re saying, and that I don’t like the tone in which you are writing your thoughts, and that I think you are a harmful influence regarding these matters in particular.
You are treating sponsorees as if you’re doing a grand favour to them, when (in my opinion) they’re just doing us an equally sized favour by spending their time in contributing to our project and wanting to learn to do it better. It is true that, sadly, I don’t get to do much real mentoring myself nowadays (and note how I use the word “mentoring” instead of “sponsoring”), and that’s a pity, because together with being AM, they are two of the most important tasks in Debian, because in their hands lies Debian’s future. Recently, an old sponsoree of mine who became DM mailed me to ask some questions regarding library packaging. I found it most pleasing to write a very detailed mail to him tailored to his specific questions, rather than telling him “Go read your answers scattered in these three documents and mailing list threads”. I was most glad for the opportunity to make a difference in his learning process, and felt proud in contributing if only a teensy bit in somebody excelling in their future work as a developer. If you, Neil, don’t find it in you to see it that way or, even worse, think sponsorees should be spending their time striving to please you and your rules, and think it’s okay to go patronizing them around, then you should consider stopping. Or, at least, you should be aware that some of us (or at least me) who lurk in this list, are not in agreement at all with you. I do realize there are way more requests on this list than people willing to sponsor, and I have no magic solution to that. I only know that this thread deeply disturbed me, and I decided to let that be known. -- - Are you sure we're good? - Always. -- Rory and Lorelai -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-mentors-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org