Google Code-in/Admins/Email templates

Email templates used by organization administrators throughout the contest.

First email to mentors when the contest starts
''Example email from November 2017. [Mentors in "BCC" for privacy; org admins in "To"]''

'''Google Code-in Wikimedia Mentor info | Please read! (~4min)'''

Hi fellow Wikimedia Google Code-in (GCI) mentors!

As you might know, GCI just started today and will run for the next seven weeks. Once again a big "Thank You!" for mentoring for Wikimedia! This email includes some info that might be helpful.

INFO SESSION FOR FIRST TIME MENTORS:

If you have never mentored before and have questions or want to talk: We plan to have a "Google Hangout" session this Friday December 1st at 17:00 UTC, and also an IRC Q&A hour on Monday December 4th at 18:00 UTC in #wikimedia-devrel on Freenode. You will receive an invitation email. This is just an optional offer (and an experiment). Of course you are also welcome to contact the org admins (Sam Reed, Florian Schmidt, Srishti Sethi, John Mark Vandenberg, Andre Klapper) via email or IRC if you have comments / questions!

WORKFLOW (CREATING & REVIEWING YOUR TASKS):

Feel free to directly create your tasks on the GCI site (especially those of mentors who do not mentor any tasks yet!). An org admin will take another quick look at them before they get published. Org admins might not publish all your tasks immediately (as we don't want you to stress out having to review all your tasks within the same 24h hours, and we want to keep a good variety of tasks available). After a student has claimed a task and clicked "Submit for review", you will either have to click "Approve task" or "More work needed" (plus you can also give more time to the student). Please note: Reviewing a patch as "improvements needed' in Wikimedia Gerrit (or such) won't make the GCI site know that, so the task would remain as "Submitted for review" and your 36 hours keep running. Make sure to also set "More work needed" on the GCI site when appropriate so we don't get angry emails from Google that our mentors are too slow! :)

YOUR AVAILABILITY:

If some students are pushy and ping you for reviews because they understand GCI as a competition, feel free to remind them that patience is a virtue, that we are after quality and not quantity, and that we are humans having other jobs, real-life, or even have to sleep. Mentors do have 24h of time to review and reply to questions until Google will send a reminder email, and a maximum of 36h in total. However, if you plan to be off for a weekend or take holidays, please either do tell us (admins could also add more co-mentors to a task if you have somebody in mind), or when creating tasks simply put some "[DONT PUBLISH BEFORE 20171231]" prefix or such into the task summary.

MISC:


 * Please share your feedback / lessons learned on "organizational" aspects in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T181738
 * As we'll need to choose "winners" at the end, please already share feedback on students in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T182509 . That is a non-public task. I hope we've added all mentors to have access to that task. If you cannot, please send us an email!
 * To allow mentors to better reach Wikimedia GCI admins (e.g. to get a task published quickly, as pinging individuals on IRC does not really scale), we now have a mailing list to contact all Wikimedia org admins.
 * Google has also published some "Mentor Responsibilities" at https://developers.google.com/open-source/gci/help/responsibilities . This page is linked from https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Code-in/Mentors

YOUR FEEDBACK:

If there are any issues with students (such as plagiarism) please do let the org admins know. If you have any questions or comments, ask and tell us! And if you like mentoring students in Google Code-in, please tell others in our community - we can create more tasks (which we do need!) and add more mentors at any time in the next seven weeks.

Again, thank you a lot for joining these crazy seven weeks!

Contacting mentors without any tasks
'''Got any Wikimedia tasks for Google Code-in? Or something we can help with?'''

[Mentors in "BCC" for privacy; org admins in "To"]

Hi,

thanks for having registered as a Wikimedia mentor in Google Code-in! https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Code-in/Mentors

From a quick look, it seems that there are no tasks on the GCI site yet that you're mentoring. Even if you start with only one or two tasks that you have in mind, please go ahead and create them!

If there is something unclear that we can help with, please let us know!

Thank you!

Email to mentors a week before the contest ends
''Example email from January 2018. [Mentors in "BCC" for privacy; org admins in "To"]''

[Wikimedia GCI Mentors] Google Code-in 2017 ending next week

Hi Wikimedia GCI mentors!

Some quick important info and two requests:

There will be increased student activity these last days (students trying to finish 3 tasks to get a shirt, or to get into the top 10). But seeing the number of open tasks we still offer we should be fine.

IMPORTANT DEADLINES:

Mon, Jan 15th 17:00UTC - Students to claim their final task. Wed, Jan 17th 17:00UTC - Students to submit their work. In the next 24 hours, mentors must approve or reject. You cannot 'request more work'. Thu, Jan 18th 17:00UTC - Mentors to review student's work. Wed, Jan 24th 17:00UTC - Wikimedia to choose 2 Grand Prize Winners, 1 backup winner, 2 other finalists (from the list of top 10 students) Wed, Jan 31st - Winners announced on g.co/gci & Google Open Source blog

TWO REQUESTS TO MENTORS:

1) We need to choose 2 Grand Prize Winners, 1 backup winner, and 2 other finalists from our 10 students who resolved the most tasks. Please do share your feedback about remarkable students in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T182509 That is a non-public task. I hope I've added all mentors to have access to that task. If you cannot access it, please ping me!

2) Please share your feedback / lessons learned on "organizational" aspects in public https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T181738 What was good (socially & technically)? What to improve? Which tasks should we have offered but were missing? Which tasks did not get picked up and do you have a theory why? Where did students struggle? Share your ideas and impressions! And as every year I also wonder how to keep more students more involved in our projects after GCI has ended. Adding comments in their last GCI tasks pointing to the list of tasks offered by your project? Asking if they've subscribed to the mailing list of your project? Or is that too pushy already? :-/ Thoughts welcome in that Phab task...

BIG THANK YOU TO EVERYBODY!

This year we've had a record breaking number of tasks, students, and mentors. GCI only works because *you* volunteer to mentor, find and provide tasks, provide a helping hand. As usual, it has been a great (and sometimes exhausting) experience and I hope you had the same fun!

Email to mentors after winners have been announced
''Example email from February 2018. [Mentors in "BCC" for privacy; org admins in "To"]''

[Wikimedia GCI Mentors] Feedback to Google; Save students' work; Grand Prize winners trip

Hi Wikimedia GCI mentors!

Our winners have been announced: https://opensource.googleblog.com/2018/01/google-code-in-2017-winners.html Grand Prize winners: Albert Wolszon and Nikita Volobuiev. Finalists: David Siedtmann, Rafid Aslam, and Yifei He.

PROVIDE FEEDBACK TO GOOGLE:

Google asks us to "Please take a few minutes to fill out our post-GCI feedback survey: (Add URL here) We read all of the comments. It's a very important tool as we strive to continuously improve and grow the contest. Your feedback is instrumental to that process. Thank you in advance for any feedback, ideas, or comments."

SAVE WORK THAT IS ON THE GCI WEBSITE:

If you have students' work only attached in a task instance on the GCI website, please do get the work out soon. On March 15th when Google will start deleting data of the GCI 2017 program.

ONE MENTOR TO VISIT GOOGLE FOR A WEEKEND:

After February 10th Google will also ask us to define and send one mentor (it should be a mentor the students interacted with) to the Google headquarters for a weekend with the Grand Prize winners. No exact dates known yet. Same procedure as in the last years, and same unclear steps how to decide who to attend. :P I've created https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T186600 to not forget.