On 11/30/2011 01:48 AM, wikimediaindia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2011 12:00:00 +0530 From: Srikanth Lakshmanan srik.lak@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimedia's participation in Google Summer of Code To: Wikimedia India Community list wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Message-ID: CA+30aUNEu4iKx61222Z+vvNndGXZ1ZwDqgDHV5ypwvHm5VL5JA@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 01:53, Sumana Harihareswara sumanah@wikimedia.orgwrote:
I managed MediaWiki's participation in Google Summer of Code this year, and could talk with anyone interested in participating, anyone researching it, and anyone who is curious. :-) We try to document our participation on mediawiki.org wiki pages.
Thanks Sumana for posting the summary voluntarily, was good to read them.
Glad I could help!
At the risk of sounding foolish comparing content creation and software development, I have few questions. Feel free to ignore them if they are foolish ones :)
Yes, it is a very big difference, comparing content creation and software development. It might be more useful to try to look at other *writing* projects or other similar projects for comparison, such as essay contests and Wiki Loves Monuments.
Also, GSoC is a FULL-TIME project for participants; they work 40 hours/week for three months. So you might want to consider Google Code-In as another model to compare http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2011/10/google-code-in-are-you-in.html . Code-In asks for code, documentation, and other contributions in the form of smaller tasks. Similarly OpenHatch http://openhatch.org/blog/ has the goal of bringing new people into open source with bite-size tutorials and tasks.
You've asked some huge questions. I shall answer them as well as I can.
- Do students come up with own project proposals / take up community's
ideas and work on them. Whats the level of motivation / ownership between the two. I am asking this just to compare GEP's model of asking students to write on designated topics and if it has an impact on motivation.
The answer is "both". http://en.flossmanuals.net/GSoCStudentGuide/ch007_finding-the-right-project/ and http://en.flossmanuals.net/GSoCStudentGuide/ch008_writing-a-proposal/ give more details. Basically, open source communities have basic ideas that they offer the students. Students applying for GSoC have to choose among 175 open source projects, which vary in population, codebase size, language, platform, etc., etc., and create proposals for the tasks they'll spend 3 months working on. The students, in applying to work with any project, have to write proposals detailing what they will do and how. The timeline from 2011:
http://www.google-melange.com/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2011/tim...
You probably also want to read http://en.flossmanuals.net/GSoCMentoring/defining-a-project/ . The mentors who have written that manual have a lot of experience regarding encouraging students.
Different projects have different processes for soliciting proposals and managing proposal submissions.
- What factors do you think make students to continue contributing to the
opensource community?
This is a big and open question and many people are trying to figure it out. Some thoughts on this from the GSoC mentors' manual: http://en.flossmanuals.net/GSoCMentoring/building-a-lifetime-contributor/
There are many factors; some of them are probably very long-term, and some of them are easier to affect. Experts Leslie Hawthorn and Mel Chua think we have to work in terms of engineering education -- Hawthorn is working on ensuring that kids around the ages of 11-14 know that they have the power to tinker with software, and Chua has done a lot of work on bringing open source work into the undergraduate computer science curriculum via http://teachingopensource.org/index.php/POSSE .
I think it helps if a student has free time to contribute to open source even during the academic year. So, having to earn money via part-time jobs, or having family responsibilities (cooking, cleaning, caretaking, etc.), or having parents who don't understand and scorn this hobby ("you should be studying instead!" "why are you working for free?") decreases the likelihood of continued contribution.
It helps a lot, I think, if students make personal connections, feel that their work is valued, can see that their work makes a difference, and can see a career path that open source contribution helps with. These are factors that Google Summer of Code and similar programs can help with.
This is not a comprehensive list. There are people writing dissertations about this topic! :)
- How crucial is the role of mentors in it. Who are the mentors
usually(WMF staff / community members?), how do they join as mentors?. I am asking this particularly since I see mentors' involvement among reasons for failure.
I hesitate to get in the middle of an argument about another project, especially one I was not involved in and do not know very well. So please do not take what I say as implying anything about any other programs.
Please read http://en.flossmanuals.net/GSoCMentoring/what-makes-a-good-mentor/ and other parts of that instruction guide that give best practices for mentoring students in GSoC.
Just to be clear: the Google Summer of Code project for MediaWiki aims to work on MediaWiki *as a whole* and is not restricted to projects that directly benefit the Wikimedia project or the Wikimedia Foundation.
Mentors are very important. For MediaWiki's GSoC project, some are Wikimedia Foundation staff and some are not. You can see that here:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2011
Mentors need to be people who know the part of the codebase that the student will be working on, who are eager to help the student achieve their goal, and who are kind and diligent.
Sometimes the project's GSoC administrator (in this case, me) recruits mentors, and sometimes the mentors initiate the conversation to volunteer. Some people volunteer but are not suitable and thus the project's GSoC administrator must reject them.
Different projects have different criteria for choosing their mentors and have different processes for orienting and starting them.
You need not restrict to mediawiki as org, can you share your experiences from opensource world too.
Thank you. I'm glad I could help a little bit, but when it comes to encouraging specifically *student* participation, I know MediaWiki best. You are asking questions about GSoC in general that you might want to ask Carol Smith, who runs the Google Summer of Code program and Google Code-In, and who has access to lots of lessons learned. She is at carols@google.com. Other resources for you to check out:
The GNOME Outreach Program for Women: https://live.gnome.org/GnomeWomen/OutreachProgram2011
Open Source at Oregon State University: http://osuosl.org/students
Mel Chua on how to teach open source skills in college: http://opensource.com/education/11/4/diving-open-source-communities-student-...
-- Regards Srikanth.L
best,
Thanks Sumana for the details. Help much in understanding GSoC from student participation angle. Thanks again.
Regards, Srikanth L
Not specific to MediaWiki or GSoC, but this document[1] by Shakti Kannan explains a lot about the common issues you'll face if you're doing Open Source advocacy in Indian colleges.
[1]: http://www.shakthimaan.com/downloads.html#shakthimaan-indian-challenge-of-fl...
Thanks for sharing this link, Yuvi! As someone completely unfamiliar with the topic, I am wondering if you all consider the issues discussed in that paper still an accurate depiction of the state in education in 2011.
Thanks! Jessie
On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 10:22 AM, Yuvi Panda yuvipanda@gmail.com wrote:
Not specific to MediaWiki or GSoC, but this document[1] by Shakti Kannan explains a lot about the common issues you'll face if you're doing Open Source advocacy in Indian colleges.
-- Yuvi Panda T http://yuvi.in/blog
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The paper says it so well !! +1000 to that !!!
I have been doing FOSS promotion for about 11 years now (www.plug.org.in) and faced same issues all the time. Except that they now know there is something called Linux and open source, nothing much has changed in all these years.
You can at least teach to the students and may be they can accept a few things, but teaching FOSS (or anything for that matter) to teachers is a nightmare. You can get about 1-2 % teachers max. from whom you can get some positive response.
Well, I can go on and on and on on this topic.
-Sudhanwa
On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 12:04 AM, Jessie Wild jwild@wikimedia.org wrote:
Thanks for sharing this link, Yuvi! As someone completely unfamiliar with the topic, I am wondering if you all consider the issues discussed in that paper still an accurate depiction of the state in education in 2011.
Thanks! Jessie
On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 10:22 AM, Yuvi Panda yuvipanda@gmail.com wrote:
Not specific to MediaWiki or GSoC, but this document[1] by Shakti Kannan explains a lot about the common issues you'll face if you're doing Open Source advocacy in Indian colleges.
-- Yuvi Panda T http://yuvi.in/blog
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
-- Jessie Wild Global Development, Manager Wikimedia Foundation
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On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 00:04, Jessie Wild jwild@wikimedia.org wrote:
Thanks for sharing this link, Yuvi! As someone completely unfamiliar with the topic, I am wondering if you all consider the issues discussed in that paper still an accurate depiction of the state in education in 2011.
Fewer things have changed from 2007 to now.
1. Internet penetration has increased, atleast lot many people have broadband now, but still things have to improve. 2. Facebook. (the timepass/"hanging out" the author mentions happens online now.) 3. GNU/Linux or open source are not completely new terms for atleast city students, most of them would have heard, many more students *use* opensource (be it ubuntu / android etc), but collaboration / contribution still needs awareness. 4. The number of rock stars like Yuvi at college level who are aware of the outside world, has increased. But proportionately they are still like Wikipedia editors : Wikipedia readers.
On Fri, Dec 2, 2011 at 12:04 AM, Jessie Wild jwild@wikimedia.org wrote:
Thanks for sharing this link, Yuvi! As someone completely unfamiliar with the topic, I am wondering if you all consider the issues discussed in that paper still an accurate depiction of the state in education in 2011.
Pretty much the same. The specifics differ (Facebook has 'replaced' hanging out at the beach/local-place-of-choice), but the overall picture is still scarily accurate. Nobody really cares much.
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