On Thu, 2013-10-10 at 11:11 -0700, Quim Gil wrote:
I'm pretty sure that there is a task that most of
us could mentor. It
doesn't need to be related with the MediaWiki codebase. Come on, think
harder! ;)
I organized GNOME's participation in Google Code-In (and its predecessor
GHOP) three times in the past.
== Stuff that takes time when preparing / taking part ==
What takes most of the time for admins is
1) before contest starts, nag developers and community members to become
mentors and to provide a large number of really well-defined and
well-documented tasks which are not too small and not too big, and
2) when the contest is running, make sure mentors respond quickly.
Students could come across as impatient due to Code-In's competition
system (students get points for tasks, you cannot claim a new task until
the old one has been reviewed and finished, and students with most
points get a trip to Google HQ. Last time organizations had to agree
that reviews must happen within 36 hours, also on weekends/holidays).
This nagging often took me about an hour per day, every day.
But maybe rules / ToS have changed again this year, don't know.
== Aspects to consider whether to try or not ==
In 2012, GNOME did not apply for taking part.
The reasons that I see are:
1) translation tasks were not allowed anymore,
2) Google reduced the number of orgs to 10 so preparation work might
have not paid off in the end,
3) time spent mentoring students took often longer than if mentors did
the task themselves,
4) tasks only take a few days (no creation of strong binding to
mentor/org),
5) students often didn't stick with the org afterwards but maybe were
more after t-shirt/money/Google invitation.
These are the topics that I consider important to discuss before
deciding. Of course, the setup and structure of Google Code-In might
work totally well for other mentoring organizations, or communities that
are less lazy and have more (wo)manpower than the GNOME one. ;-)
andre
PS: Lydia of WMDE organized GCI for KDE in 2012 who successfully took
part, so her feedback on this thread could also be pretty helpful.
--
Andre Klapper | Wikimedia Bugwrangler
http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/