Re: being the only mentor

[Micah Cowan]

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Nagarjuna wrote:
> This year, gnowsys project has only one mentor, my self.  It will be
> nice, if other mentors if they have interest in the project may go
> through the two shortlisted projects: 1. gnowser and 2. export
> module, and add your comments, and if you please some points too.  
> 
> Keeping in mind the impact gnowser may create for enhancing the user
> base, given only one scholarship, I will prefer 1 over 2, though 2 is
> also very useful for attracting user base from the semantic web
> community.  Hope some of you may have time to to glance through the
> proposals and give your comments.

I'm a little surprised you're asking for this (at least, the scoring
part). Given that the scores are merely a means for adjusting where a
given proposal falls in relation to "the acceptance line", and that
you've already decided that you prefer one over the other, shouldn't you
just score up the first one above the second, make sure it's over the
current line, and not worry too much about other mentor's opinions of
the proposals?

I'm also the only mentor for my project (Wget). For my part, I haven't
been interested in scores from other mentors, since no one else will
have as clear an idea what Wget's current needs are, nor of students'
participation to-date with the project (in fact, I've privately emailed
mentors who added scores, asking them not to do so, so that I could keep
the ranking straight).

Aside from a proposal's general quality, the scores I've assigned to
Wget proposals are heavily affected by how high a priority the actual
feature is, and by the level of participation the student has had with
the project during this phase, which obviously can only be determined by
people who are actively involved with Wget development.

You're welcome to do as you like, naturally, but since you're the one
who will be mentoring the student, you should consider reserving final
say in which proposal to accept (and therefore, what it's score is in
relation to the others).

Note that, once the decision to accept one proposal has made, and
decline the other, it'll be more work for you to keep adding "-2" scores
to the declined one until it falls below the line.

- --
Micah J. Cowan
Programmer, musician, typesetting enthusiast, gamer,
and GNU Wget Project Maintainer.
http://micah.cowan.name/
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