Talk:Summer of Code 2012/management

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Latest comment: 11 years ago by Varnent in topic Free floating ideas

The management process appears to be quite strict on first glance, but having been a part of the process in the last year, I support Sumana's stand. It will help us in getting quality contributors who will stick around for a long time. Akshay.agarwal (talk) 19:29, 16 March 2012 (UTC)Reply

Use "proposal" not "application"[edit]

We should consistently use "proposal" and not "application" as the latter is misleading. "Proposal" is better at conveying the consistent work necessary. Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Volunteer Development Coordinator (talk) 02:45, 6 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

Next year:[edit]

  • Soft deadline of 1 week before the Google deadline to circulate your plan on wikitech-l. Just formalizing what's already the case -- if you don't do that, then you have far less of a chance to attract a mentor.
  • Circulate http://ploum.net/post/be-selected-student-for-soc to prospective students.
  • Start recruiting and encouraging students in December.
  • Clearly tell mentors what's expected of them, starting the moment they sign up. Don't expect them to read the whole multipage mentors' guide. Give them a one-pager.
  • Strongly and clearly signal to students that conflicting/overlapping/duplicate projects are not the way we do things around here.
  • Follow http://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2012/07/10/how-to-recruit-open-source-contributors/

Free floating ideas[edit]

  1. Have an IRC meeting(s) for applicants before the deadline to gauge skills, commitment, and get a sense of who applicants are.
  2. Dedicated IRC channel for WM GSoC to encourage discussion among mentors, etc.
  3. Develop out GSoC wikipage into multi-page portal setup to help manage what goes where and encourage usage (maybe?). (1-3)--Varnent (talk) 20:21, 21 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. A dedicated IRC channel for GSoC is, in my view, bad; there are already too many channels for people to keep track of, and they should just talk in #mediawiki. The other ideas, I like. :-) Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Volunteer Development Coordinator (talk) 20:34, 21 April 2012 (UTC)Reply
Fair point.  :) Continuing improvement of the devo community tone towards newbies will likely help make students feel more confident/comfortable in being bold in the #MW IRC room. --Varnent (talk) 21:31, 21 April 2012 (UTC)Reply