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From: Marvin Humphrey <marvin@rectangular.com>
Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2016 19:44:48 -0700
Message-ID: <CAAS6=7iFcXzOsL2LfvchtkPA34vg6AKBhE1wzG7sin1HZxmU2Q@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Looking for mentors
To: "general@incubator.apache.org" <general@incubator.apache.org>
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archived-at: Fri, 10 Jun 2016 02:45:19 -0000

On Thu, Jun 9, 2016 at 12:01 AM, Sergio Fern=C3=A1ndez <wikier@apache.org> =
wrote:
> (Off-topic) At some point we may need to discuss our incubation capacity.=
..
> People present cool proposal and they get vote just because that, without
> checking our available resources.

Incubation capacity is limited by total Mentoring capacity across all
podlings, and by our ability to cover central administration.

With regards to central administration, even at ~55 podlings, we are still
mostly managing to cover what's needed:

* Spare release voting capacity (Justin Mclean, John Ament)
* Report preparation (John, Marvin)
* Followup after troubled podlings (John)
* Administrivia (John, Marvin, Ted, Nick Burch)
* Mediation (Ted, Marvin, others)
* Relief Mentors (...)

Happily, responsibility is more spread out than it used to be -- Jukka was =
the
first line of defense for nearly all of those when he was Chair.  We are
heavily dependent on both John and Justin and would struggle to replace the=
ir
contributions, but for the moment we are holding -- with the one weakness
being that when a podling needs relief Mentors there are few to be had.

Total Mentoring capacity is hard to assess.  We keep adding awesome new IPM=
C
members, and sometimes new podlings will persuade high-quality inactive IPM=
C
Members to return to active duty.  But we do appear to be getting more
stretched as strong proposals keep pouring in.

In recent times, the Incubator has not been voting to accept podlings that
have an inadequate *number* of Mentors.  However, we have for many years ha=
d
podlings where several of the Mentors do not do much beyond lend their name=
 to
the proposal.

Overstretched mentoring has always been a concern, but I think it is becomi=
ng
a bit more of a concern now as podlings struggle more to recruit Mentors --
perhaps tempting already overcommitted Mentors to strech even further, or
necessitating the recruitment of rookies from the ASF Membership with no
Incubator experience.

As a mitigation, I think we should be paying a little more attention to the
Mentor roster in new proposals.  One simple report would tell us a lot -- j=
ust
list all the podlings that each proposed Mentor is already signed up for.

If there are concerns that any of the proposed Mentors are overcommitted, i=
t
would be appropriate to raise them on private@incubator.

Marvin Humphrey

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