And I think in mentorship it is difficult to remember what it was like to be a beginner, or to see the obvious barriers to participation, unless you're close to that experience.
Completely agreed with Dave on this. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_model_of_skill_acquisition -- the key point the original paper makes is that you literally see the world differently at different stages of mastery. It's hard to see with eyes that are not our own.
In short, I don't believe that there is a ghettoisation of project newcomers, or a clique of project insiders, by design. Projects are like any other regular social gathering (think PTA, chess club, political party, etc.)
That's another good thing to point out. Just because it's on the internet or has a "FOSS" label on it doesn't mean that people have never, ever, done this sort of thing before. The history of civilization is *still* "more people sharing more resources in new ways" (Howard Rheingold) and it'd be silly to expect people to stop being people just because, y'know, they're on computers.
--Mel _______________________________________________ tos mailing list tos@teachingopensource.org http://lists.teachingopensource.org/mailman/listinfo/tos
