Re: emacswiki GSOC

[Glenn Morris]

I'm sorry if anyone feels lets down.
I hope you all understand that everyone is contributing here as a
volunteer, and sometimes, for whatever reason, Something Comes Up, and
we need to take a break from Emacs-related mails (of which there are a
lot!) for a week, or longer.

It was earlier mentioned that mentoring people does not take too much
time - about 5 hours a week. I actually think this is quite a lot of time!
I should guess that the number of people able to commit 5+ hours a week
on a regular basis to working on Emacs is really small.

Personally I feel that teaching people is a significant responsibility
that requires a lot of effort to do right. I feel uncomfortable making a
formal commitment to do so. I can't even keep up with all the stuff that
people submit already.

http://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code/wiki/AdviceforMentors
mentions having two mentors per student, and "it is also a good idea to
have a spare mentor or two", and "it is important to ensure that your
whole project community are on board with the mentoring task".
This seems like sound advice to me, but it also feels like something
that requires significant effort to do right.

I think the lesson for next year is that these issues should start to be
looked at a lot further in advance of the deadline.