[Maintainers] Widening access to representations UI

Exercism
1

One issue for smaller tracks is that there are not enough mentor sessions for track-creators to get access to the representations UI. That means in some situations we have people who have made representers and can’t see how they’re being used, which is pretty ridiculous!

I’ve been meaning to fix this for ages but kept forgetting, but we’re going to sort it this week. My proposed method is to create a JSON file (in some repo somewhere - @ErikSchierboom will decide) with three keys:

  • exercism_username
  • track
  • expiry_date (probably 6 months after the entry is added to the JSON file)

Any unexpired users in that file will then get access to the super-mentor UIs of the relevant tracks. Future maintainers can then just PR themselves to that file.

If you would like to be included in the first pass of this, please reply to this with your exercism username and any tracks you’d like to be in. @ErikSchierboom will then seed the file with you. Please use seperate threads to ask any questions about this, to make it easy for Erik to track things here :slight_smile:

The general requirement is that you are the lead on a track (e.g. @Meatball on Crystal, @porkostomus on Clojure - to name two people who have wanted this forever) or that you are a frequent mentor on a small track with a very good track record (either a super-mentor elsewhere, or someone with a very high rating on the track in question). The representations UI will allow you to leave automated feedback on all solutions via our representers functionality. This will also work on tracks without representers, due to our new generic representer.

Update: If you’re unsure if you qualify, feel free to put your details down and we’ll check :slight_smile:

1 Like
2

IsaacG for awk, bash, jq please

3

Not sure if it is a small track, but kotp for Ruby.

4

I would like to participate as well. I think I’ll never reach super mentor status, but it is very interesting to see it in action because I intend to improve the backend for the C++ track. The username is vaeng.

5

Yes please!

github: lpil
track: Gleam

6

github: meatball133
exercism: meatball
track: Crystal

7

I think all the tracks I mentor fit into this category:

{
  "username": "glennj",
  "tracks": [
    "8th",
    "awk",
    "ballerina",
    "bash",
    "jq",
    "lua",
    "pharo-smalltalk",
    "tcl",
    "wren"
  ]
}
8

habere-et-dispertire for raku please ! :cookie: :milk_glass:

9

ee7 - Nim, Zig

10

jonmcalder for R

11

ceddlyburge for Elm please :)

12

You should all now have access.

Future additions/removals should be done via a PR to https://github.com/exercism/website-copy/blob/main/automators.json - @ceddlyburge you can be the first to try that for us please! :smiley:

13

(Goes without saying, but please tread carefully, read the instructions carefully, and ask questions if you have any - but other than that, please go wild!

14

It doesn’t seem to work for me.

15

It’s because your username is Meatball not meatball on Exercism. @ErikSchierboom Could you make it case-insensitive please?

16

Where would I go to test it?

17

https://exercism.org/mentoring/automation?track_slug=cpp

1 Like
18

I presume the relevant doc is
https://exercism.org/docs/mentoring/how-to-give-feedback-on-representations

Do I have any visibility into feedback given to representations on other tracks, so I can learn from those who have already trodden the path? For instance is there any point to providing automated feedback for a successful hello-world?

19

Not really. Although maybe adding readonly access to all super-mentors to all tracks would be interesting/useful! I’m also not sure that a lot of the feedback given is actually aligned with the spec. I’ve deleted lots in the past where people haven’t read the rules. I suspect you’ll do a very good job by just following your intuition.

Yeah, why not! Seems like a nice supportive thing for a student to see straight away. Celebratory feedback is generally low-hanging and lovely. It really really encouraged me while I was doing the Elixir track to get that.

Obviously, with Hello World, we probably don’t want to go over the top in praising someone for their text-editing skills, but we can still say “Nice work - hopefully that wasn’t too challenging. The next exercise will take you deeper!” or something along those lines (it’s 1am - I shouldn’t be writing advice :joy:)

20

I’ve opened a pull request, as, erm, requested :)