[python-committers] Mentoring Julien Palard (core), Cheryl Sabella (bug) and Sanyam Khurana (bug)

[Paul Moore]

On 10 December 2017 at 01:41, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10 December 2017 at 09:46, R. David Murray <rdmurray at bitdance.com> wrote:
>> The point is, in Martin's judgement (and I have had no reason to doubt
>> it in the years that have followed) is that it is a far more common
>> problem for newly promoted people to be afraid to screw up than it is
>> for someone to go rogue and not listen when communicated with.  In my
>> experience the latter has happened only once, and we have a lot of
>> people with triage privileges.
>
> +1 - "Who am I to have this power?" is a pretty common reaction to
> community promotions, so erring on the side of "I trust your
> judgement, so you should trust your judgement" is a good way to go.

I absolutely agree with this view. Giving commit rights is (in my
opinion) far more about saying that we trust someone's judgement than
it is about giving out a privilege. And yet, certainly in my case, and
in my experience in most other people's cases, being *told* that
people trust your judgement doesn't eradicate that feeling that maybe
they made a mistake... So making it clear to people they don't need to
ask, but we're here to support them if they want to ask, is the right
tone to take.

> But at the same time, we should make it clear that "Help me better
> calibrate my judgement" is an entirely appropriate use case for the
> core-mentorship list (and we keep those archives closed so they're not
> available to search engines).

Definitely. Knowing where to go for advice, whether it's to help in
difficult edge cases, or just for validation when you think you know
the right answer but want to check, is the key thing for anyone new to
the process (and honestly, for the old hands too).

Paul