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

[Lydia Pintscher]

Hi Mauricio,

On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 13:57, Mauricio Piacentini <piacentini at kde.org> 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.

We changed the selection process for this year trying to make it
fairer for everyone.
That's why once all proposals are in KDEGames should sit down and make
a ranked list of all proposals you would find worthy of taking part in
GSoC and that you could realisticly mentor as a team.

> 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:

The -1/+1 votings are done by all KDE mentors. After that the 4 admins
will sit down and make a proposal for how to allocate the slots we get
from Google which will hopefully make everyone happy.

> --
> 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.

Everyone who wants to mentor should sign up, yes. Cause only when they
are signed up we can assign mentors to students. Everyone who does not
sign up on the webapp can't become a mentor.

> 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.

Yes, this is exactly what we are trying to prevent this year. And a
first step in that direction is letting subprojects choose which
proposals are actually important for them. Just as Leo I have no idea
what KDEGames needs. I could very well assign a project to you that is
totally worthless to you folks. To prevent that we need the list you
create after the application period closes.

> Let me be 100% clear here: I know this was not made on purpose to "rig"
> anything, and the admins here are volunteering to help conduct the
> project as fairly as possible. But organizing this is a lot of work, and
> sometimes the communication is not arriving clear at the other end. This
> is my humble attempt to communicate clearly to the kdegames community
> what we have to do to get on board, so if it happens again that no
> project from kdegames is selected for lack of mentors then the fault is
> entirely from us.

As long as your mentors are signed up to this list you should get
notified of any deadlines and so on.
Make sure they are signed up on the Google webapp and here. Poke one
of the admins to have them approved.

If you have more questions let us know.


Cheers
Lydia

-- 
Lydia Pintscher
Amarok community manager
kde.org - amarok.kde.org - kubuntu.org
claimid.com/nightrose