[Kde-games-devel] Scoring/Ranking Student Applications

[Leonardo Franchi]

On Wednesday 25 March 2009 12:57:44 Mauricio Piacentini wrote:
> Hi, people. Regarding scoring: for the past 3 years no proposal from
> kdegames got selected, while at the same time we had multiple
> acceptances for other areas of KDE. I had not participated in the mentor
> process, and as I understood it this happened because we (kdegames) did
> not have pre-reserved slots, or something like that.
> So I want to make sure this year we (games and also edu) are on board. I
> find that most of the kdegames community still does not know exactly
> what we have to do. I posted about this last month to let us prepare for
> it (see the archives), but the process was not defined at that time.
> The message posted yesterday by Jeff explains the process but it is
> still not clear to me, certainly because I do not know how gsoc works,
> so please help me here, so things are clear and I can write a short
> message to kdegames-devel outlining the process:
>
> Who are the mentors that will vote? How many, and from which areas of
> KDE? Jeff mentioned:
>
> --
> April 3rd 19:00 UTC: When the student application period closes, and not
> before, we will begin the scoring process.  Each mentor is allowed to
> score each application, but ONLY +1 or -1.  Please do not assign any
> other score to a proposal; likewise do not vote more than once on a
> proposal (if anyone sees these rules not being followed, please report
> it to the admins).
> --
>
> So, should I ask the kdegames developers to sign up as mentors so we
> could have a say on what gets selected or not? Up until now I think only
> Stefan is signed, but I might be wrong.
>
> If this is how it works, I think it tends to bias slots to the
> "subproject" that has more mentors signed, and tends to create division
> and competition inside KDE. The whole concept of subproject is also
> somehow artificial. Why in some cases an application is considered a
> project, and in others a module of 25 applications gets the same
> treatment? Last year for example we had 6 Amarok projects awarded. I
> understand the importance and strength of the Amarok community, but I
> would like to avoid something like this happening again while other
> areas get zero slots, as it brings feelings of unfair sharing of
> resources to the KDE community as a whole.

We are trying to avoid what happened last year---it was not done in the best 
way possible. However, what we are trying to do is to allow the people who 
know best---the subprojects--to choose what proposals are actually accepted. 
It doesn't make sense for me to have a say in kdegames projects, as I know 
nothing about kdegames.

So the idea is to allow the sub-projects to determine how many slots they 
realistically want and can fill with good applications, and then try to balance 
everyone's needs and desires with the slots that we have to spread around.

wrt. subscribing mentors---you should get everyone who is willing to be a 
mentor and has the experience, as well as the time commitment, to do it. 
Please don't just try to stuff mentors in to have more votes :) We are trying 
to be as fair as possible to everyone involved.

leo
 
-----
lfranchi at kde.org		Tufts  University 2010
leonardo.franchi at tufts.edu                The KDE Project