User talk:GeekRack

review squad app

Thanks for your application, GeekRack! Actually, with your background and interests (particularly in programming), there's no reason why you can't get directly involved with application/hardware development. There are a good number of high school students your age involved (many of whom are good friends of mine - I'm about 5 years older than you), even as part of the volunteer support team and writing applications - see IMSA for one (very active) group of high-school developers, and Test issues for the current testing being done on the core hardware, firmware, and software if you'd like to join in.

The Review Squad tends to be geared towards younger students who don't have programming experience, to get them started learning how to write good bug reports, file tickets, give feedback to developers, etc - we could use people to mentor younger students through this process as well, if you're specifically interested in the Squad.

Feel free to contact me with any questions you might have, or if I can help you get started in any way.

Mchua 13:42, 31 January 2008 (EST)

getting involved

• Besides the wiki, we have http://dev.laptop.org (trac) for bug reports and http://rt.laptop.org (rt) for helpdesking/tech-support.
• The latter is part of Support gang, which might be a good thing for you to join if you've got the time (more at that link). You wouldn't be the youngest there, by the way.
• Chat is usually over the mesh, so kids would be talking mostly with people in physical proximity to them (their classmates, etc). Chat can also use Jabber so far-away folks can join the same room - but creating chatrooms is dynamic, so there isn't one place or channel to hang out on or monitor unless you're talking about IRC (also available as an Activity, see XoIRC). Not a lot of kids on IRC, no active "moderation" per se, we've got channel ops to kick out really abusive people but they don't watch everything, people typically contact them to report abuse (but it hasn't happened yet iirc). So "yes, please join the chats!" but no real need for a moderator, though it's a good thought to come up with things to teach kids about internet safety.

Mchua 16:48, 3 February 2008 (EST)