Google Code-in/2016

Google Code-in is a contest to introduce pre-university students (ages 13-17) to the many kinds of contributions that make free and open source software (FOSS) development possible. Students must complete tasks, one at a time. It is sponsored and run by Google. The Wikimedia Foundation has participated since 2013.

The Google Code-in 2016 contest runs from November 28, 2016 to January 16, 2017 (see the full timeline).

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Instructions for GCI students
Only after November 27th, when the Google Code-In contest opens for entries by student participants, come back to this wiki page to follow the instructions below. The instructions are common to all Wikimedia GCI tasks.

Register for the contest
Register on the Google Code-in site, and get a general overview of the contest provided by Google.

Choose tasks and read the related documentation

 * If you choose to work on a coding-related task, follow all the steps indicated in our “How to become a MediaWiki hacker” tutorial to setup the development environment, download our code from Git, and start submitting patches in Gerrit. Some helpful tips for the contest which are missing in the tutorial:
 * We recommend MediaWiki-Vagrant, for setting up the development environment for MediaWiki - a virtual machine that has the basic wiki software and various common extensions preconfigured.
 * Only if you have problems with Gerrit, providing your work in the corresponding task in Wikimedia Phabricator is an acceptable workaround.
 * Test your patches before submitting them for review in Gerrit! If you have submitted them without testing, clearly say so in an additional comment in Gerrit.
 * If you choose to work on any other task other than coding such as documentation, outreach, research, design, support, read our “How to Contribute” tutorial.

Ask for feedback, questions, and support

 * To communicate directly with your mentor, connect to the IRC channel they are frequently available at. See the list of mentors below. Your mentor will not always be around or awake - please just ask as other people might also be able to help.
 * If you have a specific question about a task, comment in the related Phabricator task. "What do I have to do to work on this?" is not a good question to start with. The more specific your questions are, the more likely somebody can answer them quickly. If you have no idea at all how to start working on a task - please consider finding an easier one first.
 * For general questions, refer to IRC channels, mailing lists, wiki discussion pages, or Gerrit discussion pages (if you have a problem with Gerrit).
 * Learn more at Communication.

Some general recommendations for communicating

 * Before reaching out to the members of the community with questions, do some basic research yourself first on the task and on the related issues you are facing: Look at the code, try to understand what it is supposed to do, and try to find the probable place(s) where you need to make changes in order to fix the bug.
 * Bug reports (also called "tasks") in Phabricator) have a "Tags" section in the upper right corner. There you can see the project that the problem is located in. This provides you a hint about the Git repository that the code is located in, and about the development team which you could contact if you want to discuss it in a "broader" way, as comments in bug reports should only refer to the specific problem described in the report. (Only if you work on the Kiwix project: Kiwix does not use Phabricator but instead uses Sourceforge).
 * Identifying yourself as a GCI student in our communication channels might help you get faster help from other members of our community.
 * Be patient when seeking input and comments. If you do not get an immediate response on an IRC channel, please ask on the phabricator task or wiki page related to the problem.
 * Avoid private emails or support requests in our social media channels.

List of Wikimedia mentors
Please be patient when seeking actions from mentors. Mentors are humans who eventually leave their computers to sleep, work, study. They might be in different timezones than you. It can take your mentor(s) up to 36 hours to review the work that you have submitted. You should be patient and should not ask for a review of your work after only a few hours of waiting. Google Code-In is about the quality of your contributions and learning how FOSS development works, not about the number of tasks that you have completed.