On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 12:52 PM, Matthew Toseland <[email protected]
> wrote:

> On Tuesday 05 Mar 2013 18:15:17 Ian Clarke wrote:
> > When have I ever disappeared or failed to keep a commitment I made?  I do
> > what I commit to do, always have, always will.
>
> Other mentors have disappeared.


I'm not other mentors.  I really think you're being a bit ridiculous here.

It is hard enough to find one mentor for any given student, are you now
saying that we can't take on a student unless we have both a mentor and a
backup mentor?  I find it hard to believe that any other project has such a
stringent requirement.

As an organisation we need to be able to deal with a mentor disappearing -
> the organisation application form may even ask what our protocol for
> dealing with disappearing mentors is, it has done so in the past, although
> two years ago it was simplified considerably iirc.
>

What is our mentoring policy for dealing with a civilization-ending
asteroid?  How about an alien invasion?  Plague?  A change in the
fundamental laws of physics rendering computation impossible?  Surely we
can't take on any students without accounting for those possibilities?


> If none of your students can be mentored by anyone else, and you don't
> have time to mentor them, then we will potentially have failed to fill in
> the evaluation on time for THREE students. Which will probably mean we
> never get onto GSoC again; it would measurably annoy the people running the
> programme.
>

For crying out loud.  I am telling you that I will have time.  I have
always had time in the past.  I have time RIGHT NOW when I am effectively
mentoring 3 students outside the context of GSoC (I devote 1-4 hours per
student per week).


> All that would have to have for this to happen is for you to disappear for
> a few days around the mid-term because of a business commitment you took on
> without checking the dates...
>

A business commitment in Afghanistan?  How likely is it that I would have a
business commitment somewhere with no Internet access?


> Of course it's unlikely that Google will let you have 3 students anyway -
> last year the metric was 1 slot = 1 mentor with an allocated student IIRC.
> Or was that the previous year?
>

Firstly it is 2 students, not 3.  I have 3 students currently outside the
context of GSoC, but only two of them are interested in GSoC.

Secondly, I have described my intention on the GSoC mentors mailing list
and NOBODY, not one person has raised these concerns, or told me that we
were limited to 1-mentor-1-student.


> I apologise if this seems hostile


It doesn't seem hostile, it seems ridiculous.


> , but we HAVE had problems with disappearing mentors in the past


In 12 years you have never had a problem with ME disappearing in the past.
 I have a 100% success record with not disappearing, and with living up to
every commitment I've ever made related to Freenet.


> , and you did ask for my opinion. Feel free to insist, in which case I
> will admin. But if you disappear I will not be able to evaluate your
> students, and I don't think anyone else will either.


I won't disappear.

Ian.

-- 
Ian Clarke
Founder, The Freenet Project
Email: [email protected]
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