More on refining the reference check questions

I had the comments below sent to me by a colleague who is external to the Mozilla Community, but who reads my work blog and has provided opinions in the past. He provided his thoughts about the questions we ask to help evaluate candidates for the community support/empowerment/building program.

(NB: notice how the name keeps referring to what we are hoping to do with this program? It started as Community Giving…but it can be so much more. Empowerment, building, support, etc. Still seeking that illusive name for this effort. Any ideas?)

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Back to the feedback on the questions (My questions are italicized and his comments are below each one):

• Can you articulate why you think supporting this volunteer will empower him or her and the Mozilla community?

Would it be helpful to articulate what kind of empowerment you are looking for? empowerment as a leader? as a better contributor? anything in particular

• Has the volunteer helped advance the core mission of Mozilla, which is providing innovation and choice on the Web?

Nice reiteration of the core mission on this.

• By providing a relatively small level of support to this volunteer, do you think it will provide a comparatively larger benefit to the Mozilla community? If so, how? And, if possible, by how much? (Guessing is allowed. )

Do you want to give any kind of objective leveling data here? ($100 in support or a new CPU or a new big monitor?) Perhaps a better way to tease out the answer to this question is to ask about how much do you think the volunteer will be able to amplify the support given her/him?

• Can you comment on the quality of the volunteer’s work? (High quality, but low quantity can be very valuable to the project.)

Why the parenthetical on this one? Something to elaborate upon regarding how low quality work can be valuable?

• Has the volunteer been collaborative, positive, and fun to work with?

Maybe append an “if so, how?” to the end of this one?

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Thanks for the comments. All are welcome and I will try to incorporate the suggestions above.

Refining the community process: updating the reference check questions

When we first launched the community (giving) program, I blogged a lot about providing leveraged support, what type of support we would be hoping to provide, and to whom. Along the way, a pretty well-documented process developed. (You can review the community program’s wiki here.)

As part of the evaluation process found on the wiki, I created a list of reference questions that I ask each module owner, peer, or colleague of the volunteer whom we are considering for support. Over time, I have received some good feedback about what the questions are hoping to elicit and how they might be better phrased. In response, I have tried to tighten up the questions to remove any redundancies or possible confusing terms. Here is the latest draft of the reference check questions:

http://wiki.mozilla.org/CommunityProgram/SelectionProcess/ReferenceCheck#Reference_Check

Please feel free to read them over and submit your thoughts.

We will have another review meeting this Thursday (May 10), and I’ll blog about whom we recommend supporting and what we will intend to deliver.

QA Testday on Friday

I will sign into the QA test day on Friday in hope to meet new community members and participate in the process. The IRC channel is #testday for Friday (my irc nick: sethb).

Here is a wiki page developed by Tomcat that describes the day’s events: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Mozilla_QA_Community:Firefox_2004/15012_Community_Test_Day

If you haven’t participated in one of the Test Days but are interested, please join me and message me when you sign in.