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
Mentors and community members are encouraged to help candidates improving their proposals based on these criteria. They 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.

ESSENTIAL
 * Is your project proposal publicly available in a wiki page, containing answers for these questions?
 * 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 willing to integrate the deliverables?
 * What skills and experience do you have to complete the project? URLs welcome.

RELEVANT
 * Why are you interested in joining this program?
 * Is your plan realistic, leaving time for tasks like community feedback, testing, documentation...?
 * Is there an emergency plan to be applied if the project is not completed by the end of the program?

VERY GOOD TO KNOW
 * Who else wants to help and see this proposal succeed? Do you have a section in your Talk page with endorsements?
 * Have you contributed to Wikimedia projects in any way before?

Process
The selection process starts right after the deadline for submissions. Most of the time is dedicated to gather community feedback about the proposals and polish the last details.


 * Each candidate must create a support section in their Talk user page e.g. "Outreach Program for Women endorsements".
 * Community members and colleagues are encouraged to leave endorsements and feedback in that section. Don't forget to sign your comments!
 * Mentors might request additional information after the submission deadline.

Two working days before the deadline 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 taking the selection criteria as main reference. 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)
 * Now they are 3 and 7. I think the criteria still apply (flexibly) for non-coding tasks. As long as they require a clear deliverable at the end of the program, which I think is a requirement anyway for any type of project. I'm not a big believer of ongoing tasks. "Triaging bugs" feels vague anyway. If you still want to push in that direction you could go for something like "Go through all the open MediaWiki Core bug reports older than MM-YYYY".--Qgil (talk) 16:31, 28 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I have to say I'm somewhat in agreement with Dereckson's comment that the last three criteria don't fit, though for a different reason. Evaluating the motives and long-term goals with respect to the candidate and the project seems like it's not in keeping with the usual free software development model. People aren't supposed to have long-term interest in a project when they start hacking on something--it's usually just an instance of jumping in to build a feature, or fix a bug, and then jumping back to whatever else you were doing. Encouraging that mentality should definitely be part of most free software mentoring programs. The long-term benefit to WMF will likely be more in the terms of the features that get added, and the large number of newcomers that we guide through the orientation process. That many new developers will wind up helping to smooth rough edges. --216.38.130.166 17:59, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Alright, I have softened 9 simply asking for any previous Wikimedia contribution of any kind (always good to know). And I have removed any reference to long term interests of commitments, still asking why is the candidate interested in joining the program here and now (good to know in any case). The feedback was useful. I hope with this we are all happy about the list of criteria now.--Qgil (talk) 21:56, 28 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)
 * That was my cryptic way to express "Ideally one primary mentor and a secondary". I wish we could simply write "2 mentors" but I fear many proposals being turned down even having one great mentor available just because we don't have a second. I'll think of a better rephrasing keeping still one sentence short.--Qgil (talk) 16:34, 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.
 * I have rephrased a bit the Process section, trying to be more explicit in the points you mention.--Qgil (talk) 16:48, 28 November 2012 (UTC)


 * 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)
 * Good point to put it explicitly instead of assuming. I have rephrased the second point: "Is the proposal publicly available and has it registered community interest?"--Qgil (talk) 16:39, 28 November 2012 (UTC)