Thread:Talk:Summer of Code 2013/List of project ideas/reply (16)

frankly, as a general user/editor this seems all wrong -- how better to learn how to work on software than to actually work on existing software, with all its legacy flaws and issues? Cleaning up extension:cite, or any other highly used extension, will impact way, way more people than any of the stand-alone projects I see on the list. It might be harder to mentor and triage, but it seems like small stand-alone projects are often not so useful. Maybe this is part of the Google requirements (that you can't use the students as free labor) but I'd imagine most of these big extensions are pretty big intellectual challenges too, especially when considered as part of a system (around citations, or whatever).