Role Guidelines

Mentor Guidelines

Your role is to guide, not to do. Great mentors create independent, confident contributors.

Last updated: March 2026

Contents

The Mentor's Purpose

Mentors at GSSoC are experienced developers and community leaders who guide contributors toward growth and independent capability. Your job is to create an environment where contributors can safely make mistakes, learn from them, and produce work they are proud of.

Effective mentorship is about asking the right questions, not always providing the right answers. The code, the decisions, and the growth must belong to the contributor.

Your availability and responsiveness directly affect whether contributors can complete their work. Honouring the hours you committed is not optional — it is the foundation of the relationship.

Responsibilities

Honour Your Availability Commitment

You stated your weekly hours in your application. Contributors depend on you being accessible. If your availability changes significantly, notify the GSSoC team immediately rather than simply going silent.

Respond Within 48 Hours

Reply to contributor questions and pull request reviews within 24–48 hours. Late or absent responses block contributor progress and damage project momentum.

Guide, Do Not Write Code

Do not write code for contributors. Point them to relevant documentation, ask guiding questions, explain concepts, and review their approaches — but the implementation must be theirs.

Conduct Thorough Pull Request Reviews

Review pull requests with care. Explain why a change is needed, not just what. Praise good decisions explicitly. Be specific, constructive, and professional in all feedback.

Create and Label Issues Thoughtfully

Actively create and label issues — including Good First Issues — to welcome contributors at all levels. Write issue descriptions with enough context that a contributor can begin without needing to ask clarifying questions.

Foster Psychological Safety

Contributors must feel safe asking questions, including questions that might seem basic. Never shame, dismiss, or belittle any contributor's question or attempt.

What Mentors Must Not Do

  • Merge pull requests that contain copied, AI-generated, or plagiarised code without your review
  • Favour contributors based on personal relationships rather than merit
  • Use the program to promote your personal projects, services, or business interests
  • Require contributors to complete tasks outside the scope of the registered repository
  • Demean, ignore, dismiss, or harass any contributor in any channel
  • Assign multiple contributors to the same issue simultaneously without clear coordination

AI Code Review

Mentors play a critical role in upholding code quality standards. When reviewing pull requests:

  • Reject pull requests where the contributor cannot explain the logic in their own words
  • Ask contributors to walk through non-obvious code sections verbally or in text before approving
  • Encourage contributors to acknowledge AI assistance transparently in pull request descriptions
  • Escalate patterns of systematic AI misuse to the GSSoC admin team

Your approval is a signal of quality. Merging unreviewed code harms the project and sets a false standard for other contributors.