[Soc-coordination] OPW / GSoC confusion, deadlines, wiki edits

[Nicolas Dandrimont]

* Daniel Pocock <daniel at pocock.com.au> [2013-05-01 10:32:45 +0200]:

> I notice that the Summer of Code page on the wiki doesn't mention OPW
> anywhere, and even though the application process is similar, the OPW
> deadline is only published on the OPW page, whereas the SoC page
> publishes the GSoC calendar.  Maybe it will be helpful to publish a
> joint calendar.

Although it could help mentors that participate in both programs, I think a
joint calendar would be confusing for students, so I'm not sure if we should
provide it. TBH though, I didn't think the OPW deadline was today before you
pointed it out.

> Furthermore, it is not clear what the policy is on wiki edits:
> 
> - are female candidates prohibited from updating the wiki after 19:00
> UTC today (1 May, the OPW deadline), or can they make further edits and
> improvements up to 3 May (the GSoC deadline)?

Let's clear the confusion here: for GSoC, all students can (and are even
encouraged to) edit and improve their proposal until the accepted proposals are
chosen.

The first hard deadline for that is May 22nd, for the first deduplication
meeting. The idea is that we want to know, by that date, which students we
really want to have on board. I'll write another mail on the subject of student
ranking later today.

> - are mentors permitted/encouraged to help edit student proposals (e.g.
> to improve formatting, fix typos, enforce a similar structure, creating
> links to related wiki pages) or must the wiki page be exclusively
> completed by the student?  I don't think it would be right for a mentor
> to write a student's proposal, but there is some scope to make them more
> uniform for comparison.

I think it's up to the mentors to draw the line. The only important thing is
that the proposals should really, really be the student's point of view on the
project: they should reword the things that came from the mentor, and make the
proposals their own. Obviously editorial edits can be done by anybody.

You can tell your students that you want them to shape up their proposals with
more structure, if you feel you need that to compare them.

> - do coding samples have to be submitted before the deadline, or can
> they be submitted during the evaluation period?  For last minute
> applicants, it appears better for them to do the wiki and melange
> applications now and do coding exercises later, maybe even on the weekend.

The coding samples are an help for you to evaluate the student, and your
working relationship with him. They certainly can come during the evaluation
period.

Hope this helps,
-- 
Nicolas Dandrimont, Debian GSoC admin of the day

BOFH excuse #47:
Complete Transient Lockout
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