[suggestion] Mentorship program for plugin creators

Good day,

As a server owner and plugin user (not a plugin creator), I would like to suggest a feature for plugin creators. Just a thought I had when thinking about how there are some really great plugins by new or very busy authors who could really benefit from some guidance or bug-fixing help from senior creators and coders.

My idea was to hook up emerging content creators with more established creators or coders for a period of time, perhaps long enough to really get the plugin up and running without too many serious bugs or issues. I’ve seen a few very interesting plugins kinda drop off the radar as the author is unable to bring the plugin to a ‘recommended’ or ‘release’ version, and I wonder if a little help from those in the community who are good at coding could make all the difference.

As a plugin user who knows basically no coding, I do what I can to help by reporting bugs through various means, and I noticed that the authors either do not have the skill or the time to fix the issues. Maybe some help or guidance in the coding department could help…?

Thoughts? Could be a fun, helpful thing to help grow the community. Maybe there is even a team of mentors that go from mentee to mentee, helping our plugin database grow and become more reliable.

There are a few plugins I had in mind, the big one being the Project World, Core, Inventories, and Portal series. For me, this is an essential plugin, providing the ability to have a multi-world server. I love the plugin and really appreciate that the author has taken time to create it. Not to sound ungrateful, as I can only imagine the amount of time and knowledge that goes into creating a plugin like this: It suffers from a bit of polish, though, and from what I understand in the comment section, the author was struggling with some code and their ability to tie nicely into Sponge. Perhaps someone who knows about Sponge and all it can do could be a real benefit, or may even be able to change the way Sponge functions with a change on that end. Who knows…

Anyway, that’s just some thoughts and a suggestion. Maybe this already kinda happens in some unofficial way. Perhaps making it a ‘thing’ could make it more visible and encouraging for new creators.
Hope it can help. I’m loving Sponge and the community here.
Peace.

Problem with that is that if you’re more experienced, it’s almost certain that you’ll have your own things to work on. Mentorship of this kind takes time, and some of these people don’t have much of that to spare.

If people want to learn how to make plugins, there is already amazing documentation, and they can get support with specifics through many means, either the subforum on this site, or the Sponge dev IRC.

I think what might be better is if some of the better developers might record some of their sessions. Possibly in heavy coding, showing their mistakes on the way. Also showing how they debug, and work with testers to solve problems. It might be a good middle ground between trying to find the time to guide a new comer, and getting the information from master to apprentice easier. Most of the well known authors work with open source project so the files are always available for reviewing. Another possible issue here is that the new comers might also need to know more Java, so getting a mentor to instruct them in that wouldn’t be too great, for either one. I don’t know if many of our greater authors are superb teachers, but watching how they work would definitely work. There’s always a good amount of help in the plugin dev section, from what I’ve encountered.

I don’t think it’s a bad idea, but I agree that the better author’s are short on time with what they are already doing, plus helping people on the forums, in their discords, in PM’s and with their daily lives. If maybe a group of dev’s wanted to get together with new comers once a week to build a weekly project that everyone has a hand in, it wouldn’t be a bad idea. In that way the set amount of time is known, the project is predetermined, the amount of work would be known, and the newbies get a taste of collaboration, working the tools, and using the API to solve a simple problem. It would also be a quick way to get functional plugins out in the community that maybe aren’t super useful to everyone, but that do serve a purpose.

1 Like

Thanks for thinking on this and sharing your thoughts.
I really like your suggestions, especially the one about a group getting together to tackle a single goal within a designated time frame.
Really well thought out and written. I agree with everything!