Outreach programs/Selection process

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

We want to increase diversity in our community, promoting different types of candidates, projects and stakeholders.

Priorities
These are the community priorities that all mentors and org admins must assume beyond their own priorities:
 * Multiple stakeholders: we want to offer chances to projects pushed by different Wikimedia projects, indepedent developers and any other communities promoting MediaWiki software.
 * Multiple topics and technologies: our community works on multiple areas and we want to give opportunities to all of them.
 * Diversity of candidates: in addition to the usual suspects (gender, origin...) we favor the distribution of bets among known technical contributors, known editors going tech and absolute newcomers, with and without prior free software development experience.
 * Distribution of risks: we encourage the combination of relatively safe bets with risky ones, both for projects and candidates. Deliveries are important, but they shouldn't push experimentation away.

Selecting the right teams
We are not selecting candidates alone, we are selecting teams. The success of a project is based on a good candidate and a good proposal, but also on a good combination of mentors and a good flow of collaboration between all parties.

The community is an important part of the team. Having explicit supporters in the community giving feedback and helping in other ways (for instance, reviewing your work quickly) shows a shared interest, more brain and muscle for your project.

A good team must work on a good plan. A good plan is expected to define a minimum viable product (the content of your first testable release) and build the rest of features on top of it. A first release is expected already in the first half of the program. We have seen how projects missing this checkpoint have a lot more difficulties to be completed on time. A good plan also assumes that it will change during the program, adapting to new problems and opportunities.

Assessing candidates
IMPORTANT: good mentors don't make up their minds before the submission deadline. Candidates working publicly on their proposals increase naturally their chances, but anybody applying on time deserves an opportunity.

Criteria
Mentors and community members are encouraged to help candidates improving their proposals. Sharing the same criteria helps us evaluating teams.

ESSENTIAL
 * Has your proposal been submitted on time at $OFFICIAL_DESTINATION?
 * Is your data in the table of candidates up to date?
 * Is your proposal available in a wiki page, for example here?
 * Did you announce your proposal at the wikitech-l mailing list?
 * Did you announce your proposal in an existing or new Bugzilla report?
 * Have you completed one or more microtasks?
 * Does your user page contain information about you?
 * Can you commit to the amount of time estimated by the program?
 * Are there two mentors (or at least one) committed to support you through the program?
 * Are the related project maintainers aware of your proposal, and are they interested in integrating your work?
 * What skills and experience do you have to complete the project? URLs welcome.

RELEVANT
 * Why are you interested in joining this program?
 * Does your plan include a realistic deployment plan, allocating time for addressing community feedback, merging your work, testing, documentation...?
 * Have you planned for the delivery of a minimum viable product during the first half of the program?
 * Is there an emergency plan to be applied if the project is not completed by the end of the program?
 * Have you got a chance to meet your mentors in real time? (video call, call, or IRC chat)

VERY GOOD TO KNOW
 * Who else wants to help and see this proposal succeed? We will look for feedback and endorsements.
 * Have you contributed to Wikimedia projects in any way before?

Concurrent GSoC & OPW
Some factors to consider when Google Summer of Code and Outreach Program for Women concur, in order to avoid double standards:


 * GSoC evaluation goes first, without any gender bias.
 * Female GSoC participants are considered for OPW when they are the best or the only candidates for a project that is not receiving a GSoC slot.

To be clear:
 * Women considered best candidate for a specific GSoC project with a slot available can't be pushed to OPW.
 * Women not considered best candidate for a specific GSoC project can't be selected for OPW either.

Process
The selection process starts right after the deadline for submissions. 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.
 * Community members are encouraged to leave feedback in the proposal's discussion page. Don't forget to sign your comments.
 * Mentors are expected to keep assessing the candidates with practical assignments until having a clear opinion about each of their candidates. Having an interview is highly recommended. You are going to work more than three months together.

Candidates are selected by consensus taking the selection criteria as main reference. In case of dispute the program admins have the last word.