I will certainly volunteer (to mentor) next year if I feel I can add value.
Dominic Steinitz domi...@steinitz.org http://idontgetoutmuch.wordpress.com On 2 Jun 2013, at 17:23, Edward Kmett <ekm...@gmail.com> wrote: > Public good is a nebulous concept, but it is something that each of the folks > who sign up as mentors judges independently when they are rating the projects > and talking about them. > > Most of the folks who are offering to mentor have been involved in the > community for quite some time and have a pretty good overview of what is > going on, and what are currently active pain points. > > With 25 mentors we get a pretty good cross section of the community. We > aren't really able to canvas outside of the mentor group during the approval > process by google's guidelines, since we shouldn't leak information about > unaccepted projects. > > Something like that uservoice site might be used to gauge public opinion of > general ideas before the proposals start coming in, but in the end students > write the proposals we get, so the things we would have polled about are > inevitably not quite what we're rating anyways. We rarely get something that > is just cut and pasted from the ideas list. Consequently a generic rating > that doesn't take into consideration the actual proposal isn't worth a whole > lot, beyond giving students an idea of what might be a successful proposal. > There is a lot of variability in the ratings for projects based simply on > what we know about the student, how clear the proposal is, and how achievable > his or her particular goals are. > > In practice, we've been able to make sure that a couple of slots go to > separable tasks in projects like cabal, haddock, and ghc that benefit > everyone and that exceptional one-off projects don't get shut out completely > just by asking each mentor to rate all of the projects, even the ones they > aren't interested in mentoring, and from the discussions between the mentors > and between the mentors and students that ensue within melange. > > My main advice is that if you want to get involved in the process, the > easiest way to peel back the curtain is to volunteer to mentor! We're > generally quite open to adding new voices to the discussion. > > -Edward > > > > > On Sun, Jun 2, 2013 at 10:14 AM, Dominic Steinitz <domi...@steinitz.org> > wrote: > Hi Edward, > > Thanks for this comprehensive answer (and also thanks to participants in the > follow-up dissuasion). > > How is the "public good" determined? (sounds rather Benthamite). I would have > been disappointed if "charts using diagrams" had not been selected yet I > don't recall being canvassed. > > Sorry to sound picky. I think from what you say that in this particular year > it was obvious which projects should be selected; in future it may not be. I > think an acceptable reason would be "there was only one user who wanted it". > Maybe we should use something like: https://www.uservoice.com. Sadly it seems > this requires payment but there may be a free equivalent > > Dominic Steinitz > domi...@steinitz.org > http://idontgetoutmuch.wordpress.com > > On 28 May 2013, at 16:11, Edward Kmett <ekm...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Hi Dominic, >> >> The proposal is admittedly rather unfortunately opaque. >> >> The parts I can shed light on: >> >> Students come up with proposals with the help of the community and then >> submit them to google-melange.com. >> >> A bunch of folks from the haskell community sign up as potential mentors, >> vote on and discuss the proposals. (We had ~25 candidate mentors and ~20 >> proposals this year). >> >> The student application template contains a number of desirable criteria for >> a successful summer of code application, which is shown on the >> google-melange website under our organization -- an old version is available >> http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/summer-of-code/wiki/StudApply2012 contains >> >> Once we have the proposals in hand, and some initial ranking, we ask google >> for slots. Allocation is based on past performance, arcane community >> parameters that only they know, mentor ratio, etc. This should be our >> largest year in the program, despite the fact that in general organizations >> have been getting fewer slots as more organizations join, so we're >> apparently doing rather well. >> >> In general we do try to select projects that maximize the public good. Most >> of the time this can almost be done by just straight cut off based on the >> average score. There is some special casing for duplicate applications >> between different students and where students have submitted multiple >> applications we can have some flexibility in how to apply them. >> >> This year we also received an extra couple of special-purpose darcs slots >> from Google in exchange for continuing to act as an umbrella organization >> over darcs at the request of the administrator of the program at Google. In >> previous years I had requested an extra slot for them, this year the request >> came in the other direction. >> >> We do inevitably get more good proposals than we get slots. This year we >> could have easily used another 3-4 slots to good effect. >> >> The main part I can't shed light on: >> >> Google requests that the final vote tallies remain private. This is done so >> that students who put in proposals to a high volume orgs and don't get >> accepted, or who are new to the process and don't quite catch all the rules, >> don't wind up with any sort of publicly visible black mark. This >> unfortunately means, that we can't really show the unaccepted proposals with >> information about how to avoid getting your proposal rejected. >> >> I hope that helps. If you have any more questions or if my answer didn't >> suffice please feel free to follow up! >> >> -Edward Kmett >> >> >> >> On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 6:52 AM, Dominic Steinitz <domi...@steinitz.org> >> wrote: >> Hi Edward, >> >> Although the project I am interested in (as a user) has been accepted :-), I >> can't help feeling the selection process is a bit opaque. Is it documented >> somewhere and I just missed it? Apologies if I did. >> >> BTW I appreciate all the hard work that goes into the selection process. >> >> Dominic Steinitz >> domi...@steinitz.org >> http://idontgetoutmuch.wordpress.com >> >> > >
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