Google Code-in/Admins/Organization Application

Wikimedia mentoring organization application for Google Code-in 2019:

Organization profile

Public profile

Organization name - Wikimedia
Website URL - https://www.wikimedia.org/
Logo - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/Wikimedia-logo.svg/480px-Wikimedia-logo.svg.png
Primary Open Source License - GPL 2.0
Programming languages and technologies - PHP, JavaScript, CSS, Lua, Java
Tags - Free Knowledge, Wikipedia, wiki
IRC channel - https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_on_IRC
Mailing list - https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
General email - ---
Twitter URL - https://twitter.com/Wikimedia
Blog URL - https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/

Descriptions

Short Description - The non-profit foundation dedicated to bringing free content to the world. We operate Wikipedia and other websites, and we maintain the MediaWiki software which powers these websites.
Long Description - Wikimedia believes that knowledge should be free for every human being. We prioritize efforts that empower disadvantaged and underrepresented communities, and that help overcome barriers to participation. We believe in mass collaboration, diversity and consensus building to achieve our goals.

Wikipedia has become the fifth most-visited site in the world, used by more than 400 million people every month in more than 280 languages. We have more content projects including [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/), [Wikidata](https://www.wikidata.org/), or [Wikisource](https://wikisource.org/). We also maintain the [MediaWiki](https://www.mediawiki.org/) software engine and a wide collection of free and open source software projects around it. Those software projects use a variety of technologies and languages, such as PHP, JavaScript, node.js, CSS, Lua, Java, Objective-C, or C++, to mention a few. But there is much more we can do: stabilize infrastructure, increase participation, improve quality, increase reach, encourage innovation. You can help to these goals in many ways and become part of an international community!

Organization application

Are you prepared to provide between 150 and 500 tasks for students to complete?

Yes

Why does your organization want to participate in Google Code-in?

GCI allows students to learn about collaboration in a physically distributed team, diversity, and options to get involved in FOSS development. Wikimedia successfully participated in GCI 2013-2018. Communication between mentors and students and quality of contributions was usually very good. A few students became long-term contributors, continuing to help our movement to provide free knowledge for every human being. Wikimedia would be proud to be part of this contest again.

How has your org prepared for GCI?

Developers have been asked to mark self-contained tasks with clear approaches in Wikimedia's task tracker as suitable for newcomers. Several developers and teams have expressed interest in participating. Many audiences have been contacted to offer a wide range of task types (some of them do not use our phabricator.wikimedia.org task tracker but GitHub etc). Wikimedia's docs for GCI students & mentors at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Code-in/2019 have been constantly improved since 2013.

What years has your organization participated in Google Summer of Code?

GSoC: 2006-2019; GCI: 2013-2018

How many mentors have agreed to participate?

XX so far (check https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Code-in/XXXX#List_of_Wikimedia_mentors )

How do you plan to deal with any holidays or vacations mentors may have planned?

We recommend to have more than only one mentor per task (in different timezones if possible), and by making sure weekends and holidays are also covered. These expectations are communicated to mentors. Org admins also keep an eye on tasks which need input either from mentors or students and actively reach out to them.

How do you plan to deal with unresponsive mentors?

We only accept established community members as mentors. The last time we had a case of an unresponsive mentor was in 2013 - the org admins successfully reached out to other developers to review the student's work instead in a timely manner. Org admins keep an eye on tasks which need input either from mentors or students and actively reach out to them (or to other potential contribution reviewers in case of the unexpected unavailability of a mentor).

Link to 25 example tasks, from all 5 categories

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/google-code-in-2019/