Google Code-in has been announced:
http://www.google-melange.com/gci/homepage/google/gci2013
This is about 13-17 year old students performing tasks that can be isolated and a skilled contributor would complete in a couple of hours. The tasks mjust have a mentor and can be related to code, documentation, outreach, QA or UX. Participants get one point for each task completed and they can complete as many as they can between 18 November and 6 January.
Wikimedia can apply thanks to our participation on GSoC 2013. The deadline is 28 October. Only 10 organizations will be accepted.
I think we should apply. Main reasons:
...
But of course this will only work if many projects want to step in with a task and a mentor for it. So what do you think?
I personally think this is a great idea. I would have killed (metaphorically speaking) to have been able to participate in something like this with Mediawiki when I was in that age range. I concur that it seems like a good way to get annoying little bugs solved.
Beyond having mentors are there anymore requirements that we need to fulfil as an organisation? I wasn't able to find an FAQ for organisations wishing to participate. Do you know if one exists?
If I had more time, and had contributed more code (or any code) to the Mediawiki codebase (which I mostly don't due to the aforementioned lack of time), I would offer to mentor even. This seems like a really great opportunity to pick up some new volunteers and get some annoying bugs out of the way.
Thank you, Derric Atzrott