Subject: Re: Welcome to Git's GSoC 2008!

From: "Shawn O. Pearce" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2008 02:03:13 -0400

Sverre Rabbelier <[email-masked]> wrote:
> I'm wondering if you other students and mentors are interested in
> setting up something like a mailing list/forum/IM/whatever to keep
> each other posted of progress during the summer without spamming the
> other resources too much. Maybe we can all help each other out with
> any problems we encounter and just keep in touch in general?

I have been considering it.  But haven't proposed the idea myself
quite yet.

We are all working on very different projects.  But I see roughly
three classes of discussions that are likely to occur:

  * seemingly stupid questions (aka read the manual or faq)

  There's no such thing as a stupid question, only stupid answers.
  But one reason we have these wonderful mentors is they can be a
  safe place for you to bounce ideas off without inciting a flame
  war on the mailing list.

  * fine grained project specific details

  These are maybe too specific to your project to really spam close
  to 900 people on the main git mailing list, but are still worth
  discussion.  Often these sorts of discussions happen off-list
  among a few interested contributors anyway, even in non-GSoC git
  related projects.

  These probably should happen between you, your mentor(s) and a
  handful of others who your mentor has introduced you to as being
  interested in your work, and as a resource for you to go to for
  assistance (see the first class of discussion).

  * more project wide discussions

  These really should happen on the git mailing list.  You really
  want feedback from potential users, and you really want to get a
  wider audience for your work.  As your project evolves and takes
  shape your mentor should be encouring you to start posting bits
  of it for more general discussion.

That said, if the students want to set up a mailing list to help
each other out, go ahead.  And feel free to invite your mentors,
or not.  ;-)

For the record, the best way to reach me is this email address, or
as "spearce" on irc.freenode.net in #git and/or #gsoc.  I'm never
on an IM network, and I really don't like to visit web forums.
If it doesn't email to this address where I can read and reply,
its not something I am interested in.

-- 
Shawn.