Season of Docs/Administrators

Read below the responsibilities of Wikimedia's organization administrator in various phases of the Google Season of Docs program. Note that, as Season of Docs is similar to Google Summer of Code in many ways, some points refer to GSoC examples.

After the program is announced

middle of March – middle of April

1. Recruit two organization administrators.
2. Create Season of Docs/2024 page on MediaWiki.org. Add ideas for possible projects, administrators contact information, and link to the application process steps. Also, in Phabricator, create a project tag (2020 example) or request permission to create one if you don't have already.
3. Select ideas for possible projects from the outreach-programs-projects workboard or by reaching out to mentors on the mailing lists. See example here. Task description of chosen projects should meet the listed criteria.

Mentoring organizations application period

middle of April – early May

1. Apply to be a mentor organization. Visit the official program site to learn how to apply. Re-use application data from previous year.
2. Monitor steps from section above. Select or refine project ideas, update them on Phabricator & MediaWiki.org page. 
3. Request for help with mentoring projects (example) on the Wikitech-l & Wikimedia-l mailing lists.

OPTIONAL: Host an information session for applicants. For one of the previous Google Summer of Code rounds, we used YouTube for the live broadcast and IRC for a simultaneous discussion (more details).

Student application period

Before the deadline: middle of May – middle of July

1. Suggest next steps in the process to both students and mentors. Encourage students to follow both the official and Wikimedia's application process guidelines. Remind mentors to review student proposals on Phabricator and give them feedback.  
2. Answer students and mentors queries. They might approach you via various communication mediums (emails, Phabricator, IRC). Be prompt in your replies.   
3. Provide a group communication tool to interns and mentors. In the few recent outreach program rounds, we have encouraged the use of Zulip at https://wikimedia.zulipchat.com/ for Q&A; check one of the previous streams.

After the deadline: middle of July – middle of August

1. Ask mentors to review applications mentors. Encourage them to follow the selection process tips and report to you their score.
2. Announce results on Wikitech-l & Wikimedia-l mailing lists once they are out. You could also send emails to accepted participants & congratulate them. See email examples one, two.

Internship period

middle of August – middle of September

1. Engage students in your community. Prepare a list of small tasks to help students get familiar with the community practices and processes.

middle of September – middle of December

1. Suggest next steps in the process to both students and mentors. Encourage students to write weekly reports, work towards accomplishing milestones in their project timeline, communicate regularly with mentors, and submit evaluations on time. Encourage mentors to continue providing guidance to students during this time. 

OPTIONAL:

• Host an IRC chat with students. Allow students to learn and share their work with fellow participants and request feedback. 
• Share students' weekly reports with the community. See example here.
• Add students to the blog feeds to Wikimedia planet.

Wrap-up

middle of December – early January

1. Suggest next steps in the process to both students and mentors. Ensure no pull requests are remaining to be merged and deployed in production.
2. Add students projects to the Google Season of Docs past projects page. 
3. Archive the corresponding project in Wikimedia Phabricator.

OPTIONAL:

• Write a blog post for Wikimedia and/or Google Open Source blog. Include information about participants, projects they worked on, what they accomplished, etc. At the very least, announce on mail:wikitech-l & mail:wikimedia-l mailing list.
• Host a lightning showcase. Invite students to share the projects they built with the community.   

Additional notes

• For the sections listed above, do not miss any email reminders from Google as they will contain information about important deadlines.

Organizational applications

• 2020
• 2019

Resources

• Read the pages in the "Org admin" section of the GSOC mentoring manual.
• Read lessons learned from the previous editions.
• Read lessons learned from the 2017 edition.