On Thu, Nov 3, 2016 at 2:29 PM, Yaron Koren <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > I hit across this idea in the recent GSoC Mentors summit, and in the >> discussion with Srishti and Sumit on the reducing usability and scope of >> GSoC/Outreachy projects[1] among the years. > > >> *The problem* >> Students show up one or two weeks before GSoC or Outreachy, and propose a >> solution to existing ideas, and often end up completing it and leaving the >> project. Due to this, there is a decline in student-proposed ideas as well, >> given 1-2 weeks is not enough to understand Wikimedia from any direction. > > > I didn't really understand this. You seem to be talking about some or all > of the following issues: > > 1) Fewer students doing projects for the Wikimedia Foundation as part of > the Google Summer of Code and, I guess, Outreachy, than in previous > years - 2013 > being the high point. > > 2) Students doing projects that are less useful than in previous years. > > 3) Students not staying with the Wikimedia/MediaWiki after the conclusion > of their project. > > 4) Students doing projects proposed by existing MediaWiki developers, > rather than projects they proposed themselves. > > I see these as four unrelated issues, and actually I see only two of them > as real issues: #2 I don't think is true (though I'm not sure if that's > what you meant by "usability"), while #4 I don't see as an issue at all. > Personally, I think only projects proposed by potential mentors should be > considered at all, and that the documentation should state that clearly. > I'm not aware of any GSoC projects where the student came up with the idea > on their own and then executed on it successfully - with the exception of > projects where the student is an established MediaWiki developer who > happens to currently be in college, but that's obviously a special case. > It's just not reasonable to expect that someone from outside the > WMF/MediaWiki community would be able to come up with a project that (a) > makes sense, (b) fits within the current development roadmap, and (c) is of > the right scope for a GSoC/Outreachy project. > > More generally, I don't think there's anything less rewarding about doing a > project that someone else came up with. In software development, as in most > things, the difficult part - and the most rewarding part - is the > execution, not the original idea. (There are various inspirational quotes > to this effect.) > > That leaves #1 and #3 - fewer students participating, fewer students > staying on afterwards. I think #1 is just a function of fewer potential > mentors getting involved. Retaining students, on the other hand, is a real > problem. I can think of various ways to try to improve this, though > creating a new outreach/funding program seems extreme - it would take a lot > of work, and you would presumably run into the same problem of a limited > number of mentors. If there's money to pay for these kinds of things, why > not just put more money into, say, hiring more developers from out of the > GSoC pool? It's one idea. > > -Yaron >
I actually disagree somewhat - I think it can be very rewarding to fix a problem that you yourself have, as opposed to fixing somebody else's problem. This is a traditional ideology about open source - that it is all about scratching your own itch. Although arguably most gsoc students coming up with their own projects aren't actually scratching their own itch but desperately trying to come up with an idea. However, if someone happens to be a preexisting user of MediaWiki, and finds something they find super annoying, I think that can make for a very good project. As for #2 - I think in recent years there has been more effort to make sure projects are scoped appropriately. This makes it more likely for projects to be finished, at the expense of making the projects perhaps less "useful" than in older years. I think choosing the lower risk lower reward path is entirely appropriate for a program like gsoc, so I don't think this is a bad thing. As for users sticking around - I think the communication around gsoc has shifted from "Here's some money so you can work on MediaWiki without starving to death" to "Here's a little money and a job so you can put something cool on your resume". If students are being attracted to the program principally to have something on their resume or for the money (To be clear, I'm not saying there is anything wrong with that), its not surprising that they leave afterwards when the money goes away. If we want to attract people in the long term, we should probably come up with a better carrot. -- bawolff _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
