Talk:Outreach programs/LQT Archive 1

Selection process
We need to agree on the basics of the selection process, applicable to any program.

The first iteration is being applied to the Outreach Program for Women.

The Goal
We want to get new long term contributors, either recruiting new people or consolidating current members.

Any step in the process needs to point towards this goal.

Welcoming candidates
Proposal for a work-flow.

Landing page
We need to answer the basic questions beforehand.

A landing page exists for potential candidates with information including:


 * Why are we promoting this program.
 * Profiles we are looking for.
 * Examples of real projects.
 * Invitation to suggest alternative proposals (optionally pointing to hot areas).
 * Who and how to contact for questions & feedback.
 * How to apply.
 * How to get involved in the community and push for your project.

Table of candidates
We need to share the status of candidatures among mentors, program organizers and candidates.

A table exists listing all formal candidates. Work-in-progress candidatures can be optionally listed as well. Data:


 * Username & link to user page, where a basic intro and contact info is expected.
 * Full name.
 * Location.
 * If a preliminary microtask is required, link to it (preferably to a bug report).
 * Project name and link to project page.
 * Mentor(s) contacted.

Criteria
The selection criteria is public and it is recommended that mentors and community members help candidates improve their proposals based on these points. These criteria help us evaluating a candidate and a proposal as a whole. We are not trying to build any scorecard to be measured with a calculator.


 * 1) Can the candidate commit to the amount of time estimated by the mentoring program? (ESSENTIAL)
 * 2) Is the proposal interesting for the community progress?
 * 3) Is it realistic, leaving time for community feedback, testing, documentation and completion?
 * 4) Are there 1+1 mentors committed to support the candidate through the program, and beyond?
 * 5) Is the team maintaining the related Wikimedia project aware, and are they willing to integrate the deliverables?
 * 6) Who else in the community wants to see this proposal suceeding and how much can they help?
 * 7) Is there an emergency plan to be applied if the project is not completed by the end of the program?
 * 8) Does the candidate have the basic skills and experience to complete the project?
 * 9) Is there proof of previous contributions or interest in Wikimedia projects?
 * 10) How does the project fit in the growth path of the candidate and his/her interest in Wikimedia?

Process
The selection process starts right after the deadline for submissions.

Most of the time available between the deadline for submissions and the announcement of projects approved is dedicated to public feedback:


 * Each candidate will have a Support section in their Talk user page specific to the program.
 * Any community member can leave there signed comments supporting the candidate.

A couple of days before the deadline the mentors and admins of the program will meet privately and will decide which candidates are selected. Depending on the complexity of the selection a private online spreadsheet might be put in use.

Candidates are selected by consensus. In case of dispute the program admins have the last word.

Comments
Not sure where to comment given this is on a talk page already, so I'll put this here. I was really glad to see "Is there proof of previous contributions or interest in Wikimedia projects". This is purely anecdotal, but it seems to me that people who are active editors in some wikimedia project, and join some mentorship program in order to work towards fixing an issue that directly affects them (and their community) tend to stick for the long term, and care more about their project. Bawolff (talk) 22:59, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

I'm not comfortable with the three last criterias. They are too formal and too much criteria will lead to a restrictive choice, whereas everywhere at Wikimedia, we always tried to get a diversified and rich set of people.

Outreach programs are also made to gather new, external contributors. But it's offered to add "Is there proof of previous contributions or interest in Wikimedia projects?" criteria. This seems incoherent.

The next criteria is complicated to evaluate beforehand. New works lead to new opportunities, sometimes randomly, and we don't have a crystal ball to determine what will occur.

The last criteria isn't coherent with empiric community observations. There is a regular flow of arrivals and departures in online communities. The departure decision could be an exit following an issue, a decrease of motivations or other priorities in life taken over project participation. So, I don't really know how you would like to evaluate this criteria for a newcomer. A not really motivated or shy newcomer could become an hardcore contributor like a very motivated person could leave quickly after. --Dereckson (talk) 22:31, 21 November 2012 (UTC)


 * These criteria help us evaluating a candidate and a proposal as a whole. We are not trying to build any scorecard to be measured with a calculator. Knowing about previous interest and participation in Wikimedia projects does help getting a better picture about candidates and the familiarity they might have with Wikipedia et al as users. 9 and 10 would be based on what the own candidate thinks and says, not on ourselves trying to secretly guess it. It is interesting to know whether someone sees a mentoring program fitting in their career path and personal interest or they are simply trying something anew just because.


 * There is no right or wrong answers in these criteria, but they help seeing the consistency and potential risk of a specific candidate / proposal. One person might represent a wild bet, yet original and convincing. Other candidates might look like a very safe bet, but still be beaten by a potentially risky candidate. It will be up to the mentors to go for one person or another, based on their perceptions on the sum of all these criteria. I believe these questions are useful for the candidates themselves preparing their projects.--Qgil (talk) 19:13, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Criteria 2 and 6 make sense for coding tasks but feel not totally applicable for documentation/marketing/bugtriaging/etc. tasks. It's required that there should be "finishable" subtasks for ever-ongoing activities like improving documentation or bug triage, but I have problems to come up with quantifiable criteria for bug triage, as we're after quality in the end and not "comment on X tasks in 3 months". Ideas welcome. --Malyacko (talk) 18:29, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

What does "Are there 1+1 mentors committed to support the candidate through the program, and beyond?" mean? Specifically, does "1+1" mean that each candidate has 2 mentors? I'd support that. Sharihareswara (WMF) (talk) 01:57, 28 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Let's make sure that there's a reasonable expectation, for mentors, participants, and the org admin, re: whether we have an application discussion period. For example, if the mentors are looking at the applications and realize they'd like to have a phone interview with the applicant, ask her for her past open source commits, etc., etc., it would be nice to have a time period marked out for that kind of iteration and information gathering.
 * Also, we need to ensure that the project plan part of students' applications are someplace public and world-readable before the application deadline, so that other mentors and org admins can check them and give feedback. Sharihareswara (WMF) (talk) 01:56, 28 November 2012 (UTC)