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The objective of this page is to give Mentors guidance on situations that podlings find themselves in and how they might be addressed. Each project is different, so the outcomes or how you deal with any given podlings situation may be different from your podling.  What is a good fit for one project may not be a good fit for another.

Possible values include charity, community, consensus decision makingdecisionmaking, flat structure, governance, individual contributions, independence, merit, open communication, oversight, security, transparency.

Added so far:
- [Slow AddingUnsure When to Recognise Committers](#slow-adding#unsure-when-to-recognise-committers)
- [Video Meetings](#video-meetings)
- [External Website](#external-website)
- [Seeking Early Graduation](#seeking-early-graduation)
- [Missing Reports](#missing-reports)
- [Missing IPMC Release Votes](#missing-ipmc-release-votes)
- [Too Many Release Candidates](#too-many-release-candidates)
- [Author Tags in Code](#author-tags-in-code)

Help wanted to expand on these points:
- Discussions are happening off-list.
- Too much talk is happening on the private list.
- Users questions are going unanswered on the mailing list.
- There is little or no activity on the mailing list.
- There is a lot of GitHub or version control notifications on the mailing list.
- The project has trouble making its first release.
- Too many release candidates are needed for a release.
- Compiling Building the project is challenging.
- Getting the LICENSE and NOTICE correct is difficult.
- The PPMC is making releases without voting on them.
- The PPMC members are not looking after the projects name and brand.
- No PPMC members have been elected.
- No committers have been elected.
- The podling is having trouble attracting committerscontributors.
- PPMC members not signed up to the private mailing list.
- The project has a benevolent dictator.
- A single company is controlling the direction of the project. 
- Releases are not being placed in the ASF mirror system.
- Other mentors have gone missing.
- The podling is voting on too many things.
- Having trouble getting software transferred to ASF.
- Having trouble getting ICLA signed from all committers.
- Unsure if ICLA or SGA or CCLA is needed.
- Mentors or PPMC members have a conflict of interest.
- The podling is ready to graduate but is having trouble doing so.
- Conversations on the mailing list are mainly occurring in a language other than English.
- Only a few core people from one company are contributing code.
- The podling is make process making progress on the code, but has no website.
- Incubator reports contain meaningless statistics.
- Project website encourages users to go to GitHub.

Also feel free to add your own to the above list or take one and expand on it below.

## Unsure When Slowto AddingRecognise Committers

### Situation
The project has is unsure when how much a largecontributor numberneeds ofto contributorsdo, butbefore isbeing slowmade in grantinga committer access.

### Suggested Action
Encourage the projectpodling to discuss what it means to be a committer and document it on their website. Encourage them to keep the committer bar low and recognise all forms of contribution, not just code contributions. If committer = PMC then perhaps suggest breaking into those two groups, so it's easier to appoint committers. Encourage the PPMC members to look out for committers that slowly commit over time as well as the ones who are more easily recognisable.

### Reasoning
For the project to have a long term future, it's essential to have new committers and PMC members. A podling that sets the committer bar too high or only recognises somecertain formforms of contribution, maycan notdiscourage surviveinvolvement. Having new people with different backgrounds will inject fresh ideas and will make the project flourish in unexpected ways.

### Values
merit, flat structure, community


## Video Meetings

### Situation
The project wants to have regular video meetings to work out project direction.

### Suggested Action
Try to discourage the project from having these meetings and encourage discussion to take place on the mailing list. If they insist, then make sure that anything discussed at the meeting is brought back to the mailing list. Make it clear that any decisions are not made in those meetings, but discussions are brought back to the list to involve the entire community.

### Reasoning
Not everyone lives in the same timezone or even if they do can attend meetings if you work on the project outside of your day job. This disadvantages Synchronous communications can also disadvantage people who can only contribute part time. Project-time to the project. Having meetings like this may mean that project knowledge may not be written donedown or shared, and that puts up abarriers barrier to people unfamiliar with this cultural knowledge.

### Values
independence, open communication, community, consensus decision makingdecisionmaking


# External Website

### Situation
The project has an external web site managed by some people in the project and not under the control of the podling PPMC.

### Suggested Action
Encourage the project to movemigrate the website to ASF infrastructure, redirect the existing domain to the Apache one, and donate the domain name to the ASF.

### Reasoning
The PPMC shouldmust have control of their website, and not a 3rd party or anothersubgroup groupof ofthe peoplePPMC. Having the site hosted on ASF infrastructure ensures that it will exist as long as the project does and that all the community can work on it.

## Values
governance, independence, community, flat structure, security


## Seeking Early Graduation

## Situation
The project thinkshad proposed graduation, but it has readynot todemonstrated graduatethe whenability itto isself notgovern.

### Suggested Action
Provide detailed feedback on the podlings' incubator reportsreport if they tryindicate tothey graduateare toonearing earlygraduation. Encourage the projectpodling to discuss and fill out the maturity model and reflect honestly on where they are on their path to graduation.

### Reasoning
Projects often think they are ready to graduate whenbefore they may not be are independent of their mentors' help. Reflecting on where they are in that journey might show some gaps and areas whenwhere they need to improve before graduating.

### Values
governance, community, open communication, consensus decision makingdecisionmaking, oversight


## Missing Reports

### Situation
The project missed an incubator report.

### Suggested Action
Encourage the podling to discuss the report on list or create and collaborate on the report on their wiki a week or two before the due date. Reminders are often sent to the dev list or private list, lack of responses to those reminders, might indicate that PPMC members are not signed up to list.

### Reasoning
Working on the report in the open encourages everyone to contribute and feel that are part of the project. Once the project graduates they will need to submit reports to the board. PPMC members need to be signed up to and read the project's mailing lists to provide required oversight.

### Values
governance, community, open communication, consensus decision making, oversight

 decisionmaking, oversight

## Missing IPMC Release Votes

### Situation
The podling is having trouble getting 3 IPMC votes for a release.

### Suggested Action
Make a checklist for community members to assess a release so that it is easy to verify. Over time add common mistakes to this checklist.
Before presenting the release for an IPMC vote, ask all mentors to vote on the release, even if this extends the typical voting period.
If the vote is taking too long, kindly remind the mentors or other IPMC member to vote.

### Reasoning
All mentors should be engaged in helping the podling understand the release process.

### Values
community, governance, consensus decisionmaking, oversight

## Too Many Release Candidates

### Situation
The podling needs to make multiple release candidates before a good release candidate is created.

### Suggested Action
Slow down and take time for the community (including the users) to thoroughly review the release. Make a checklist for the community to assess a release so that it is easy to verify. Complete the checklist even if an issue is found. In your vote emails include a summary of what you have checked and the platform you checked it on. Clearly document your release process and keep it up to date.

### Reasoning
Slowing down allows more time for multiple issues to be found for each release candidate. Having a checklist and following all steps will reduce the number of release candidates, as multiple issues can be found at the same time.

### Values
community

## Author Tags in Code

### Situation
Developers are adding author tags in code.

### Suggested Action
Remove them.

### Reasoning
Author tags imply ownership and discourage other community members from modifying the code. Adding your name to the source code may impact legal protection that the ASF offers to contributors.

### Values
community