[Moving this to a separate thread, and again, please do not discuss funding sources or board notifications on this thread.]
Joan had specific questions as to how to engage Outreachy mentors. I would suggest sending them links to Outreachy's documentation of mentor duties and the mentor FAQ: https://www.outreachy.org/mentor/#mentor https://www.outreachy.org/mentor/mentor-faq/ Outreachy mentors need to submit their project description through the Outreachy website. I've attached the project information we ask for in a text file. The community sign up doesn't start until August 1, so there's no way for mentors to sign up for the next round until then. If the ASF D&I committee wants to review mentor's project before August, they can use the format to start gathering proposals. More information on Joan's specific questions below: On Thu, Jun 27, 2019 at 11:59 AM Joan Touzet <[email protected]> wrote: > On 2019-06-27 13:22, Naomi S wrote: > > On Thu, 27 Jun 2019 at 18:52, Ross Gardler > > <[email protected]> wrote: > > > >> I have seen NO discussion on the topic of who the mentors are and > minimal > >> discussion on how we evaluate proposals. > >> > > > > I will note that this very thread ("[DISCUSS] Outreachy framework > > proposal") was supposed to be the start of that conversation. > > And I would like to continue that topic, but until the noise abates and > the S/N is restored here, I refuse to do so. I simply haven't the energy > to wade through the piles of vitriol. > > I'll leave a few points here, and hopefully someone can pick up on them: > > * We need a double blind evaluation system that masks project name, > applicant name, specific details, etc. > (FYI - using the term "anonymized evaluation system" is a better term "double blind evaluation system". I've seen vision-impaired people complain about how this term is an unpleasant one for them.) I assume you mean an anonymized evaluation system for deciding which Outreachy internship projects to accept? The Outreachy website asks for a lot of project-specific details (like communication channel links, documentation for how to make a first contribution, etc.). I don't think it will be possible to make an informed decision about whether a project is going to be successful in Outreachy without looking at those details. You would need someone to do a lot of redaction on the project descriptions to achieve anonymity. Or are you talking about an anonymous review system to help coordinators needing to make a decision about which intern selections? That would be needed if there are more interns than you have funding for. Coordinators will already have access to information about applicants and intern selects through the Outreachy website, so implementing an anonymized intern selection system might not be feasible for that. The information that coordinators and mentors can see on the Outreachy website has some details about the applicants. Each project will have a page that lists applicants who have recorded a contribution or filled out a final application. That page lists the applicant's name, email address, location and timezone, pronouns, and a summary of how many days free the applicant has during the internship. The final application lists answers to questions like "What is your experience in other free software communities?" and "What other experience do you have that is relevant to this project?" Mentors have tried to implement anonymous reviews of Outreachy applicants' contributions. I know some projects in Mozilla have turned on a GitHub feature to hide the name of the person submitting a contribution. The coordinator gathers final applications and recorded contributions, redacts personal information, and shares it with the mentors. Then the mentors make a decision on which applicant to accept, all without knowing details about the applicant. If the ASF wants to anonymize intern selections for review, it would need a neutral third party to redact personal information and identifying information from the intern's final application and the project. > * We need a way to ensure that mentors actually are capable of > committing the time necessary for this programme, to check in with > the admins on regular intervals to ensure this is happening, and to > blacklist them from future involvement if they are unable to meet > those expectations and they do not have an acceptable excuse, since > real money will have been wasted. (Doctor's note, death in the > family, etc.) > Outreachy requires mentors to check a box during project sign up to specify that they understand this is a 5 hour time commitment during the internship. There's another box for acknowledging the 10 hour time commitment during the contribution period. The Outreachy organizers don't do anything as elaborate as what you're proposing, but there's nothing stopping coordinators from doing so. Outreachy already has feedback points three times during the internship (2 weeks in, 8 weeks in, and 13 weeks in). Mentors give feedback on their interns, including their response time, whether the intern should be paid their stipend for that term, and whether the internship should be extended. Interns give private feedback on their mentors, including the mentor's response time to their questions and how long it takes the mentors to give feedback on their contributions. The mentor and intern feedback is private, only read by Outreachy organizers. That's because interns sometimes talk about how their personal life has been impacting the amount of time they could put into their internship. These are often very personal matters, e.g. "I'm going through a divorce" or "I'm moving to a new country" or "I have this specific health issue". That's not something we want to automatically share with coordinators. However, if you're concerned about mentor response times, I can let you know if I see concerning trends in mentor response time or intern comments on the ASF mentors. > * We need a double-check that the projects involved agree to follow > not just the ASF CoC, but the Outreachy CoC, and any other imposed > requirements > * We need a ruler by which we can measure the quality of the project > in terms of its suitability for an intern - what will the intern > *gain* by working on the project? Or is it just self-interest of > the requesting PMC/org? Quantified and qualified, preferably. > One of the questions we ask mentors during project sign up is "What benefit will the intern have for working on this project?" I've also talked about other project criteria you might want to use here: https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/f790fa5bffd7c2aac3fb495593456d55bed940815891511c6d3fd039@%3Cdev.diversity.apache.org%3E > * We need to review the tagged areas Outreachy provides to ensure > that the applications we vet cover a broad range of opportunities > within our Foundation, not 100% documentation or internal-facing > tools. > * We should find a volunteer to reach out to our compatriots within > Fedora and Debian to see how they coordinate and vet their > similar opportunity programs. > I also would recommend talking with the Mozilla coordinators, as they have more projects that they vet (10-15 per round). I can connect you with Dustin (the main Mozilla coordinator). I would need a specific set of people to connect him with, rather than dragging him to a public mailing list thread that is at risk of meandering off topic. Sage Sharp Outreachy Organizer
Mentor Information ------------------ (check box) 'I have read the mentor duties (https://www.outreachy.org/mentor/#mentor) and the mentor FAQ (https://www.outreachy.org/mentor/mentor-faq/)' (check box) 'I understand that Outreachy mentors are required to spend a minimum of 5 hours a week mentoring their intern during the three month internship period' (check box) 'I understand that Outreachy mentors often spend 5-10 hours a week helping applicants during the six week application period' (check box) 'I understand that Outreachy mentors will need to sign a mentor contract (https://www.outreachy.org/generic-mentor-contract-export/) after they accept an applicant as an intern' (multiple choice) "How long have you been a contributor on this team?" "A community can be comprised of many different teams that each work on separate subsystems, modules, applications, libraries, tools, documentation, user experience, graphical design, and more. Typically each Outreachy project involves working with a particular team in the community. If the Outreachy intern would work with the whole community rather than a particular team, consider the community to be a team for these questions. How long have you been a contributor on this team?", choices: '0-2 months'), '3-5 months'), '6-11 months'), '1-2 years'), 'More than 2 years'), (short answer) "What contributions have you made to this team and this community? If none, what contributions have you made to other FOSS communities?" (short answer) "What is your username on the team communication channel? What is your username on the team communication channel? (This information will be shared with applicants.) (multiple choice) "Have you been a mentor for Outreachy before? Outreachy welcomes first time mentors, but this information allows the coordinator and other mentors to provide extra help to new mentors." choices: 'Yes, I have mentored in a past Outreachy round' 'No, but I have mentored for Google Summer of Code or Google Code In' 'No, but I have mentored for Rails Girls Summer of Code' 'No, but I have mentored with another mentorship program' 'No, I have never mentored before' (short answer) "What is your mentorship style? Do you prefer short daily standups, longer weekly reports, or informal progress reports? Are you willing to try pair programming when your intern gets stuck? Do you like talking over video chat or answering questions via email? Give the applicants a sense of what it will be like to work with you during the internship." Project information ------------------- (short answer, text only) 'Project short title. Short title for this internship project proposal. This should be 100 characters or less, starting with a verb like "Create", "Improve", "Extend", "Survey", "Document", etc. Assume the applicant has never heard of your technology before and keep it simple. The short title will be used in your project page URL, so keep it short.' (short answer with HTML) 'Description of the internship project. - Please do not place educational restrictions (such as needing a degree) on this project. Outreachy applicants are judged on their demonstrated skills, not on their educational background. If your project requires knowledge that would normally be learned during a degree, your project contribution tasks should test applicants for that knowledge. - You should exclude applicant skills and communication channels. Those will be added in the next step. - You should also exclude discussion of internship tasks, internship benefits, repository URLs, issue tracker URLs, newcomer tags, or application period contribution tasks. Those are collected in the optional fields below.' (short answer with HTML) "What are the minimum computer requirements to contribute to this project during the application period? Examples: Operating system, CPU, memory, and hard drive space. Many Outreachy applicants have older laptops. Many of them are working with ten year old systems (e.g. 1.6 GHz dual core with 2 GB of RAM). Please evaluate whether your project could better support contributors with older systems." (URL) "(Optional) URL for your team's repository or contribution mechanism" (URL) "(Optional) URL for your team's issue tracker" (short answer, text only) "(Optional) What tag is used for newcomer-friendly issues for your team or for this internship project? Please use a tag and not a URL." (short answer with HTML) "How can applicants make a contribution to your project? Instructions for how applicants can make contributions during the Outreachy application period. Make sure to include links to getting started tutorials or documentation, how applicants can find contribution tasks on your project website or issue tracker, who they should ask for tasks, and everything they need to know to get started." (short answer with HTML) '(Optional) Description of possible internship tasks. What smaller tasks will they start on? What is the main task or tasks for the internship? Do you have any optional stretch goals?' (short answer with HTML) "(Optional) How will the intern benefit from working with your team on this project? Imagine you're pitching this internship to a promising candidate. What would you say to convince them to apply? For example, what technical and non-technical skills will they learn from working on this project? How will this help them further their career in open source?" (short answer with HTML) '(Optional) How will this internship project benefit the FOSS community that is funding it?' (only shown to the coordinators) (multiple choice) "How long has your team been accepting publicly submitted contributions? A community can be comprised of many different teams that each work on separate subsystems, modules, applications, libraries, tools, documentation, user experience, graphical design, and more. Typically each Outreachy project involves working with a particular team in the community. If the Outreachy intern would work with the whole community rather than a particular team, consider the community to be a team for these questions. How long has your team been accepting publicly submitted contributions?" choices: '0-2 months' '3-5 months' '6-11 months' '1-2 years' 'More than 2 years' (multiple choice) "How many regular contributors does your team have?" choices: '1-2 people' '3-5 people' '6-10 people' '11-20 people' '21-50 people' '50-100 people' 'More than 100 people' (check box) 'I assert that this Outreachy internship project will released under either an OSI-approved open source license (https://opensource.org/licenses/alphabetical) that is also identified by the FSF as a free software license (https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html), OR a Creative Commons license approved for free cultural works (https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/freeworks/' (short answer with HTML) "(Optional) If this Outreachy internship project will be released under a license that is not an OSI-approved and FSF-approved license OR a Creative Commons license, please provide a description and links to the non-free licenses." (check box) 'I assert that this Outreachy internship project will forward the interests of free and open source software, not proprietary software.' (short answer with HTML) "(Optional) If this internship project furthers the interests of proprietary software, please explain." List of Project Skills ---------------------- Each project will list multiple skills that they require or desire applicants to have. The skills are in a particular format, in order to minimize impostor syndrome: (short answer, text only) "Skill description. What is one skill an the applicant needs to have in order to contribute to this internship project, or what skill will they need to be willing to learn?" (multiple choice) "Expected skill experience level. Choose this carefully! Many Outreachy applicants choose not to apply for an internship project unless they meet 100% of the project skill criteria." choices: 'Mentors are willing to teach this skill to applicants with no experience at all' 'Applicants should have read about the skill' 'Applicants should have used this skill in class or personal projects' 'Applicants should be able to expand on their skills with the help of mentors' 'Applicants who are experienced in this skill will have the chance to expand it further' (multiple choice) "Skill impact on intern selection. Is this skill a hard requirement, a preference, or an optional bonus? Choose this carefully! Many Outreachy applicants choose not to apply for an internship project unless they meet 100% of the project skill criteria." choices: "It would be nice if applicants had this skill, but it will not impact intern selection" "Mentors will prefer applicants who have this skill" "Mentors will only accept applicants who have this skill as an intern" Project Communication Channels ------------------------------ Each project will list one or more communication channels. The format of those is in a particular format, in order to lower the barriers for people who have never used tools like IRC before. (short answer, text only) 'Communication tool name. The name of the communication tool your project uses. E.g. "a mailing list", "IRC", "Zulip", "Mattermost", or "Discourse"' (URL, accepts http/https and irc://<host>[:port]/<channel> format) 'Communication channel URL. URL for the communication channel applicants will use to reach mentors and ask questions about this internship project. IRC URLs should be in the form irc://<host>[:port]/[channel]. Since many applicants have issues with IRC port blocking at their universities, IRC communication links will use Kiwi IRC (https://kiwiirc.com/) to direct applicants to a web-based IRC client. If this is a mailing list, the URL should be the mailing list subscription page.' (short answer with HTML) 'Instructions on joining. (Optional) After following the communication channel link, are there any special instructions? For example: "Join the #outreachy channel and make sure to introduce yourself.' (short answer with HTML) "Community norms. (Optional) What communication norms would a newcomer need to know about this communication channel? Example: newcomers to open source don't know they should Cc their mentor or the software maintainer when asking a question to a large mailing list. Think about what a newcomer would find surprising when communicating on this channel." (URL, http and https only) 'Communication tool documentation URL. (Optional) URL for the documentation for your communication tool. This should be user-focused documentation that explains the basic mechanisms of logging in and features. Suggestions: IRC - https://wiki.gnome.org/Outreachy/IRC; Zulip - https://chat.zulip.org/help/; Mattersmost - https://docs.mattermost.com/guides/user.html'
