Getting mentor attention [was: Mailman SNMP support]
Nitin Agarwal writes:
Here its Nitin Agarwal, an open source Software developer and enthusiast.
Hi, pleased to meet you. I'm belatedly replying to the list, and at length, as there are other students in your situation. I hope it helps.
First off, I saw you talked to Terri on IRC. Much as I hate to burden Terri, that is the right thing to do if you're not getting attention to your proposal, especially from persons who proposed or volunteered to mentor it. If at all possible, try to grab GSoC people on IRC (or by email) in the following order:
- Any other mentor or active developer, to get comments first.
- Barry.
- Terri or Florian.
- Jessica (real last resort).
Contact info for the above is on the "Ideas" page.
Barry isn't official in GSoC, but he's head of the Mailman project and a ranking demi-god in the Pytheon. Also crazy busy, so you may get a polite brushoff. OTOH, he can probably solve Mailman problems in half the time of anybody else. And if Barry asks for help, someone will respond.
Terri and Florian are PSF org admins, not just Mailman IIUC. Crazy busy, too, but dealing with problems is their job as org admin. As org admins, to some extent they can knock heads. You don't really want that, except as a last resort.
Jessica is PSF org admin, with no specific interest in Mailman. A really last resort, because it implies Terri and Florian are asleep at the wheel.
N.B. They all *like* talking to people when they've got time. Don't be *afraid* to talk to them. But it's better to spread yourself around (or as the Japanese say, develop a wide face) and get to know more people in the project, especially at the start.
I am looking forward to contribute to Mailman in the upcoming Google Summer of Code 2014 through the Mailman SNMP Support Project idea. I have an experience with the open source software development and tools used.
This is a "good enough" short self-introduction. However, it doesn't shine. It's like providing a numerical answer on a math test, without showing your work. (Boy do I hate it when students do that....)
Specifying languages (and implementations), maybe applications and libraries, related to the project that you have worked with, or especially "on", polishes the image. Mention projects (an URL to your github page is just another numerical answer -- tell us about your work!) But keep it short (yes, I know it's difficult to do both).
Image is important -- we mentors are all human, bright shiny things attract our attention. That's part of why we need org admins -- not everybody has image skills[1], so somebody has to go looking for and polishing up those diamonds in the the rough. But you can better your chances by not depending on the org admins to get attention for your proposal -- do it yourself.
I have an indepth knowledge of SNMP protocol and an understanding of the concepts specified in the SNMP RFC 1157.
Although I'm willing to co-mentor this project, when you first posted I was able to expand "SNMP" but that was the extent of my knowledge. (Standards geeking is one of the things I'm good at, I'm pretty sure I can catch up. :-) I had no clue about why Mailman would want it or who requested it or who would mentor it. So I didn't respond. The two "whos" are our bad (they should be on the "Ideas" page, partly remedied now).
But it's important that *you* explain *why* you chose that feature. It's OK to just say "it's in my toolkit" (and do be honest about your motivations -- mentoring is a "trust" relationship). But, again, your proposal shines when you tell us why *we* (or our users) want it.
So you (or any student) can greatly improve your chances of getting someone to engage by telling us "why" we want it. You do that by focusing on the *user requirements* rather than on the *design and implementation* ("use this protocol" is design; "use this library" is low-level design, aka a plan for implementation). Everybody on this list is a Mailman *user* (broadly defined as list members, list admins of several flavors, and site admins), but not all are *developers*. If you can get some users saying "hey, *I* could *really* use that feature," it's more attractive to the developers and mentors (and we always have more desirable features than slots). But remember, users often don't know the buzzwords like SNMP (or even SMTP, and RFC numbers are quite arbitrary). Concretely, what are the benefits to subscribers and/or admins? Tell stories about situations where this feature would help. Describe how it would operate (from the user's viewpoint, not the protocol itself).
N.B. This advice isn't universal. In some projects, mentors are core developers who are looking for someone "just like them", who knows the protocol and just wants to dive in and implement a pre-specified feature. (That's typical for compiler optimizations, for example.) But I think it's pretty good advice for Mailman at the present time.
*****
About this specific project, my initial reaction was "we *have* an NMP" (usually called "the REST interface"). Why do we need another network management protocol, even if it's "simple"? Remember, "there should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it" is a fundamental principle of design for Python developers.[2] What does SNMP do for us that the REST interface doesn't?
Pop quiz (relevant to that last question): What statement in Sec. 1.3 of RFC 3411 immediately caught my eye? Hint: which letter in "FCAPS" caught my eye? (To readers not interested in implementing SNMP in Mailman as a GSoC intern: *don't* answer on-list!! This quiz is for prospective interns on the SNMP project!) Why are they interesting?
Do you propose to replace the RESTful interface, or to have two interfaces? (This question is not a quiz, it's a research question -- quite possibly you may finish your project and still not have a fully satisfactory answer to that.)
Another question: RFC 1157 is labelled "historic". It's been obsoleted several times. I realize that the current set of related RFCs counts at least 5 (what's "simple" about that?!), but ISTM there are important reasons why we really want the modern versions. Are you familiar with the important changes in goals for the newer RFCs?
Footnotes: [1] Note that "English is my second language" is not an excuse. Every post I've seen so far is perfectly understandable, and nobody needs to be ashamed of their English. The issue is that working on Mailman at the present time requires understanding user requirements, so do the best you can to tell stories about your project that end with users living happily ever after!
Yes, I know, second languages cost. I work in a second language that is easily the most difficult ever invented -- Japanese. But (unless you're very fortunate in finding a mentor who speaks your language), you will have to get over that, so I discount the cost -- you've already decided to pay it.
[2] If you're not familiar with these programming proverbs, type "python -m this".
On 2014-03-10, 8:55 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
First off, I saw you talked to Terri on IRC. Much as I hate to burden Terri, that is the right thing to do if you're not getting attention to your proposal, especially from persons who proposed or volunteered to mentor it. If at all possible, try to grab GSoC people on IRC (or by email) in the following order:
It is always ok to contact me! Anyone, anytime! The only thing I ask is that if I tell you to contact someone else, you actually do that and have at least one meaningful conversation with them before coming back to me. As Stephen says, I can be pretty swamped, so when I redirect students to someone else, usually it's because I think they will be more helpful than I can be at that time. I don't want to be a bottleneck for a student or mentor who's stuck on a problem and waiting for me, so I do my best to refer you to the best person I can!
Just a quick correction on the list of people that Stephen posted:
The PSF GSoC Org admins are me, Florian and Meflin.
- I'm the one who makes final decisions about sub-orgs, slots, etc. and oversees everything.
- Florian, on top of helping me as org admin (particularly with the blogs), is the person in charge of Mailman's GSoC team.
- Meflin is running our IRC channel (#python-gsoc on freenode). If you
have a question about GSoC or melange he's often the one to ask, and he
tries to be available on IRC as much as possible for quick questions.
While he's new to our team this year, he's a very experienced GSoC org admin who I asked to join us this year to take some of the load off me and Florian.
- Jessica is *not* a PSF org admin this year, but she *is* on the PSF board. If this were structured like a company, she'd be my boss.
That said, she is even more swamped than I am with Core Python (I think she's running OPW in parallel with GSoC right now), so there is basically no time mailman students should be talking to her.
If for any reason I am not responding as an org admin, you should talk to Meflin, who as the person in the closest time zone and same country, it's much easier for him to reach me out of band.
Terri
On Mar 11, 2014, at 12:55 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
Barry isn't official in GSoC, but he's head of the Mailman project and a ranking demi-god in the Pytheon. Also crazy busy, so you may get a polite brushoff. OTOH, he can probably solve Mailman problems in half the time of anybody else. And if Barry asks for help, someone will respond.
I'm probably pretty useless about any GSoC specific questions. To the extent that I have any use at all, I am happy to discuss any technical detail about Mailman 3. In general, I prefer email, since I can usually block out some time to answer detailed questions, and the mailing list archives are a wonderful historical resource. I highly advise students to mine them, either via the mail.python.org interface, or my favorite, the Gmane NNTP interface (newsgroup: gmane.mail.mailman.devel).
Pinging me on IRC (barry @ freenode: #mailman) is fine. I'm almost always online during weekdays approximately UTC 1300 - 2200 (we're in DST), but only a ping will get my attention. Don't be put off if I encourage you to take your questions to the mailing list. If I think the answer would be of general use to the developer community, that's often a better place than on an IRC channel only a small number of people participate in, and for which no good search options exist.
Please be a little patient while waiting for me to respond. Steve's right, I'm crazy busy. But if you don't hear from me within 4 or 5 days, a polite ping can help me switch contexts.
Cheers, -Barry
participants (3)
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Barry Warsaw
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Stephen J. Turnbull
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Terri Oda