Re: [Wikitech-l] Heads up: Online coding challenge
Quick update -- we now have more than 2,000 sign-ups. I figure that's a good base to work with (or if it isn't, there are bigger problems), so I've turned down the banner to about 20% and will disable it soon. Expect the frantic sign-up rate on MW.org to drop. You may have seen first bits of code pop up here and there; we'll next send folks an email with some of the standard pointers, also in an effort to re-engage people who signed up a few days ago but instantly forgot about it. ;-) Greg's also going to send out a call for volunteers to help with the judging process. Erik -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Heads up: Online coding challenge
Erik - thanks for the update. Exciting to see 2000+ signups. Looking forward to seeing some good code happen in this challenge! Alolita On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 1:40 AM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: Quick update -- we now have more than 2,000 sign-ups. I figure that's a good base to work with (or if it isn't, there are bigger problems), so I've turned down the banner to about 20% and will disable it soon. Expect the frantic sign-up rate on MW.org to drop. You may have seen first bits of code pop up here and there; we'll next send folks an email with some of the standard pointers, also in an effort to re-engage people who signed up a few days ago but instantly forgot about it. ;-) Greg's also going to send out a call for volunteers to help with the judging process. Erik -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Heads up: Online coding challenge
Official judging call coming soon. As you can see, we'll need all the help we can get -- but we're going to sort out what that entails first. --g On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 12:28 PM, Alolita Sharma alolita.sha...@gmail.com wrote: Erik - thanks for the update. Exciting to see 2000+ signups. Looking forward to seeing some good code happen in this challenge! Alolita On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 1:40 AM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: Quick update -- we now have more than 2,000 sign-ups. I figure that's a good base to work with (or if it isn't, there are bigger problems), so I've turned down the banner to about 20% and will disable it soon. Expect the frantic sign-up rate on MW.org to drop. You may have seen first bits of code pop up here and there; we'll next send folks an email with some of the standard pointers, also in an effort to re-engage people who signed up a few days ago but instantly forgot about it. ;-) Greg's also going to send out a call for volunteers to help with the judging process. Erik -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Heads up: Online coding challenge
Erik Moeller wrote: Quick update -- we now have more than 2,000 sign-ups. I figure that's a good base to work with (or if it isn't, there are bigger problems), so I've turned down the banner to about 20% and will disable it soon. Expect the frantic sign-up rate on MW.org to drop. You may have seen first bits of code pop up here and there; we'll next send folks an email with some of the standard pointers, also in an effort to re-engage people who signed up a few days ago but instantly forgot about it. ;-) Greg's also going to send out a call for volunteers to help with the judging process. Erik That's a lot! :) I wonder how many of them will proceed to code something useful and submit it. And how good will it be. An issue I see with the challenge is that it encourages the cathedral model,* so we lose the opportunity of training them as they go (eg. point out how we do i18n). Maybe Greg's mail should suggest them to ask for a quick review on #mediawiki (specially for projects which aren't completely independent). I pondered about the fairness of helping projects, but a) they could ask for help anyway in those channels, b) if the suggestion is broadcasted to all of them, they are in equal terms. *This is common to (almost?) every competition, but I assume that the goal isn't as much getting the best cathedral by each one but engaging developers able to contribute to MediaWiki. ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Heads up: Online coding challenge
That's a lot! :) I wonder how many of them will proceed to code something useful and submit it. And how good will it be. I wonder that too. :) An issue I see with the challenge is that it encourages the cathedral model,* so we lose the opportunity of training them as they go (eg. point out how we do i18n). Maybe Greg's mail should suggest them to ask for a quick review on #mediawiki (specially for projects which aren't completely independent). I pondered about the fairness of helping projects, but a) they could ask for help anyway in those channels, b) if the suggestion is broadcasted to all of them, they are in equal terms. We do have the option of sending reminder emails to the entire set of contestants, so we can certainly re-emphasize the call to show up on IRC+mailinglist for help. My guess is that in many cases, contestants won't even know the right questions to ask -- if you don't even know you should be thinking about i18n/l10n, you won't think to ask if you're doing it right or wrong. *This is common to (almost?) every competition, but I assume that the goal isn't as much getting the best cathedral by each one but engaging developers able to contribute to MediaWiki. And this is a key difference. It's why we were very careful in our legal language to clarify that winners would be determined at WMF's sole discretion. Able participation is part of that discretion, and it's not a checkbox/scoreboard kind of thing; you know it when you see it. (Which points out a bit of a bug, actually: may not be trivial to relate the IRC nick back to the project. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess.) --g ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Heads up: Online coding challenge
On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 10:40 AM, Platonides platoni...@gmail.com wrote: That's a lot! :) I wonder how many of them will proceed to code something useful and submit it. And how good will it be. An issue I see with the challenge is that it encourages the cathedral model,* so we lose the opportunity of training them as they go (eg. point out how we do i18n). Indeed, this is very different from how we traditionally get volunteer developers involved (by letting them walk into our web of addictive code and giving them feedback on their code until they can't imagine doing anything else ;). I think the theory is that some small percentage of contestants will be interested enough to actually dive in and do research, write code, and ask people for feedback directly, and those are the people we'd actually want to get back to? Depending on how many of those 2000+ signups actually submit anything, that might be a *lot* of extra judging work to find them, or it might not be too much. -- brion ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Heads up: Online coding challenge
Hey, Indeed, this is very different from how we traditionally get volunteer developers involved (by letting them walk into our web of addictive code and giving them feedback on their code until they can't imagine doing anything else ;). Ah, so that's what happened to me :0 Cheers -- Jeroen De Dauw http://www.bn2vs.com Don't panic. Don't be evil. -- ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Heads up: Online coding challenge
On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 8:31 PM, Jeroen De Dauw jeroended...@gmail.com wrote: Ah, so that's what happened to me :0 We call this recruitment by privilege escalation :D . It worked on me something like 4 times over. Roan ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Heads up: Online coding challenge
On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 2:37 PM, Roan Kattouw roan.katt...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 8:31 PM, Jeroen De Dauw jeroended...@gmail.com wrote: Ah, so that's what happened to me :0 We call this recruitment by privilege escalation :D . It worked on me something like 4 times over. And now that you're a root, what further incentive do we have to keep you around Roan? Must...find...next...level -Chad ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Heads up: Online coding challenge
On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 11:16 AM, Brion Vibber br...@pobox.com wrote: I think the theory is that some small percentage of contestants will be interested enough to actually dive in and do research, write code, and ask people for feedback directly, and those are the people we'd actually want to get back to? Pretty much. :) But we should invite folks more explicitly to share their work in progress. I've made a page for doing so here: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/October_2011_Coding_Challenge/Work_in_Progress We'll add an invitation to do so to the email and other future communications. -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Heads up: Online coding challenge
Seems like were not the only ones thinking about challenges http://developers.slashdot.org/story/11/10/20/2025241/gnarly-programming-challenges-help-recruit-coders --tomasz On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 7:36 PM, Erik Moeller e...@wikimedia.org wrote: Following up, we'd appreciate help with testing the coding challenge workflow. This is a DRAFT ONLY -- here's the current draft workflow: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:ContestWelcome/Draft_October_2011_Coding_Challenge Any data you submit through it will be lost, messaging is subject to change, and any email address you provide may receive notices as we test the workflow. :-) The contest rules are just a placeholder right now; we'll finalize them tomorrow. You can report bugs or post comments here or on http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:October_2011_Coding_Challenge Thanks! Erik -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Heads up: Online coding challenge
Following up, we'd appreciate help with testing the coding challenge workflow. This is a DRAFT ONLY -- here's the current draft workflow: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:ContestWelcome/Draft_October_2011_Coding_Challenge Any data you submit through it will be lost, messaging is subject to change, and any email address you provide may receive notices as we test the workflow. :-) The contest rules are just a placeholder right now; we'll finalize them tomorrow. You can report bugs or post comments here or on http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:October_2011_Coding_Challenge Thanks! Erik -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
[Wikitech-l] Heads up: Online coding challenge
Hi folks, we're attempting, later this week, an experiment in reaching out to new potential developers (volunteers and paid developers alike) by means of an online coding challenge. The general idea is that, by posing interesting challenges, we'll be able to attract interesting people :-). It's described a bit more here (some information is out of date): https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Weekend_of_Code For this purpose, Jeroen de Dauw has led implementation of the Contest extension which can be used to manage different types of contests and have a select group of judges evaluating submissions: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Contest The overall project is being coordinated by Greg DeKoenigsberg, formerly Senior Community Architect at Red Hat. If you'd like to be involved as a judge, please let him know (greg.dekoenigsberg at gmail dot com). This is a first experiment and it may not work, in which case we may never do it again. Greg will post a full announcement about it shortly, but in the meantime, feel free to poke around the https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Weekend_of_Code pages, make edits or suggestions, etc. We'll run a CentralNotice to advertise the coding challenges, for about a week at most. During the time the banner is running and for a week or two beyond that, we may see a few more newbies on IRC and the listservs. We'll set up some alternative communications channels for them if the flood becomes too much, but I hope that won't happen and we'll see some promising developers pop up in our community. Thanks for your hospitality. :-) All best, Erik -- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
