[Mailman-Developers] Javascript Client for Mailman

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Ankush Sharma writes:

 > I cannot comment on this as I am a student just like you.

First, thank you very much for commenting in the first place!
Students helping each other is one of the most exciting aspects of
GSoC.

But I think you misunderstand "student" in the context of GSoC.  It's
an accounting term.  "Students" get paid, mentors get tired, er,
"T-shirts", that's it!  Mentors get T-shirts!

Other than that, we're all Mailman developers.  You can and should
comment on anything where you have an opinion.  Some developers have
more experience and skills, some have a natural talent for programming
or design or building UIs and others don't have any of the above but
need a feature or bugfix, and nobody else seems to want to do it.  The
good reasons for not giving your opinion are (a) you don't have one (a
common reason for those with less experience in the project), (b)
somebody's already expressed pretty much the same opinion (in cases
where values differ, you might even add a "+1" here), and (c) you're
waiting for somebody else to comment first for some reason.

That's a little bit oversimplified, but it's important.  I don't know
if it's made explicit in the GSoC handbooks, but if you get a chance
to talk to Carol or Cat you'll hear that one of the things they enjoy
most is hearing about students who become mentors.  That's a core
value in GSoC: the kind of professional growth that turns students
into teachers.  And it happens in just one or two years for many
students.  New members normally don't get that experience in a company
(unless you're running it :-).

They also hear stories about how that assumption of responsibility
carries over to the new mentor's school and employment opportunities.