Re: [GSOC] Re: [PHP-DEV] About GSoC 2009

Marcus,

On Sat, 2009-03-14 at 03:17 +0100, Marcus Boerger wrote:
> Hello Hannes,
> 
>   whether student passes or not is not the deal of the Admin, the function
> of the admin is to make sure that there are mentors to look after all the
> students. And that those peole do a vote for the applications. Next that
> conflicts amongst different organizations because of multiple selections
> per student get resolved. Next that each selected student has a Mentor.
> Beyond that part the amdins have little to do. They only compe into place
> when a mentor drops out, usually that means they claim they drop out and
> want to be replaced. This was never brought to my attention during last
> year. And whether the student PASS or FAIL and whether they really
> contribute is totally up to the discretion of the mentor. Nothing I can
> do or want to do. And whether you like it or not, it is not the PHP way
> to have some one single person to decide about stuff. We have never done
> that and hopefully we will never do that. Last but not least, I applied
> again for us as the PHP organization because the peoiple running the show
> are actually friends wich micht or might not give us an advantage. And
> Scott was willing to do the main part of the work. And by the way, believe
> it or not I stayed up all night during conflict resolutio on every single
> GSoC, but thx for offering any helpful comment here.

Hannes has a point: Last year most projects showed no result (for some
you can find something if you search a bit, though) but most students
"passed". Why? Since every mentor did the things themselves and we had
no infrastructure of any kind.

You described the formal role of the admin quite well, but what I see is
the need for a person to look over all projects and who makes sure the
mentor&students really work with the community and reacts soon in case a
project goes in the wrong direction. (Whatever that means) This doesn't
mean that person has special decision power but has responsibility for
overall PHP-GSoC having best possible results.

It is nice that your friends spend some money (oh and "pecunia non olet"
so I like spreading the money) but I don't think the purpose is to spend
the money due to mis-communication in the project where nobody made sure
projects go to the right direction and the final reason is not to punish
the student for missing organization.

As an example: Last year during mid-terms one of the mentors wasn't
available, for whatever reasons. So I tried chasing him down, I had to
bug quite a few people to find the reason for him not being available.
The project they worked on was developed on an external CVS server where
I had no access, neither did I have any information on the project,
beyond the initial description from the application. So what should I
do? In the end, after some discussions, I let the student pass
mid-terms, but only for the reason that the mentor&community failed.
That feels plain wrong, but we couldn't punish the student for that. For
such cases we _need_ a stronger organization where as much information
as possible is shared. And that's the non-formal role of the admin,
where I see Scott (and of which I'll remind him in case there isn't more
communication this year)

johanns

> Friday, March 13, 2009, 11:59:42 PM, you wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 21:07, Marcus Boerger <[email protected]> wrote:
> >> As an update to this, I have filed the application. And Scott and I are
> >> listed as admins.
> 
> > And you two actually have the time to do the work?
> > Last year was a massive catastrophic failure.
> 
> > Despite my multiple requests for students status reports and results
> > nothing ever came out of it.
> > The fun part? Most (all?) student apparently "passed". Without
> > (seemingly) doing anything at all for the project.
> 
> > -Hannes
> 
> 
> 
>