For the sake of any other students with similar concerns, here are a
few clarifications. I have not cleared this with Abhilash, but I've
been reasonably accurate at channeling leadership so I'll apply EAFP
here. ;-)
Abhilash Raj writes:
> > On Mar 29, 2021, at 8:07 AM, Steven Chen wrote:
> > This is Steven1677(https://gitlab.com/Steven1677) on GitLab. I want to
> > contribute to the mailman3 project as a GSoC student.
>
> Welcome Steven!
+1!
> You don’t have to share anything on the public list that you are not
> comfortable sharing, including your personal information.
Here are the technical details. Only the mentors and org admins for
the organization you are applying to (all of them, not limited to
those you are interacting with[1]) can see your application on
Google's site. (Of course the GSoC administrators @Google can, too.)
This means that it is safe to publish the URL to your proposal on this
(or any public) list. Only the applicant and those who are logged in
as members of the organization have access.
I prefer that you *not* do so in general, but instead copy those parts
of your proposal that you would like to discuss in the email itself.
It's not really polite to the rest of the list to have discussions of
texts they can't read. It's reasonable to include the just the URL in
cases where you've made "uninteresting" changes like typo fixes,
scheduling details, and want checking of the @GSoC version from your
potential mentors for our convenience. (Other mentors may have
different opinions, but in the end we all will respect the students'
preferences.)
Whether you post your full proposal or not is up to you. Many
students do publish the whole technical plan (including schedule) at
some point in the process, others don't. It's up to you but remember
there are a lot of smart people, as well as representatives of
constituencies the mentors have little experience with (for example,
several executives of commercial hosting services that support
Mailman) who hang out here.
In public posts, you may redact anything you consider personal,
including schedules as well as PII.
> AFAIK, it is only Google that needs that information to verify if you
> are a student and (maybe!) your mentors to have your cell phone
> number just in case they need to get in touch with you after your
> selection for some reason. I don’t think that second part is necessary
> either, but your mentors will have access to the application with
> your personal info.
I think it's a good idea to have alternative means of contact. I
heard of one case in the past where a student took a scheduled break
of one week for a relative's wedding in a remote area without
Internet, got sick and spent another ten days in a hospital. It
played havoc with the schedule but the mentors did manage to recover
the project, the student came back, completed, and got paid. Without
telephone contact, they would have been considered AWOL by the mentors
and I doubt things would have worked out.
Presumably the "normal" alternative to email would be IRC or video
chats, of course, but in emergencies you might have phone service in
areas without real access to the Internet.
Steve
Footnotes:
[1] Mailman is a small organization. Be aware that there are large
"umbrella" organizations like PSF and GNOME that support dozens of
suborgs. I believe that all the mentors and suborg admins under PSF
can see all the proposals -- that could run to a couple hundred
people. That wouldn't bother me, but others might feel differently.
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