I didn't see anything about the Finalist/Top 10 process in File:Information session for Wikimedia’s Google Code-In 2016 new mentors.pdf, and I think it would be helpful for mentors to know how that works in order to avoid unintentionally causing a student to have false expectations. We talk a lot about quality being very important, but in reality quantity is the first criteria for becoming a Finalist.
- "5.2 Selecting Finalists and Grand Prize Winners. Each Organization will evaluate the work of the ten (10) highest scoring contestants who completed tasks for their Organization and will select five (5) of those contestants as Finalists and two (2) of those Finalists as Grand Prize Winners for their Organization. Each entry will be judged according to the following factors: creativity, thoroughness, and quality of work. The Organization may additionally factor the contestant’s involvement in the Organization’s community in the judging. The Organization’s decision is final and binding." <https://developers.google.com/open-source/gci/resources/contest-rules>
As a result, mentors need to be aware that to be fair to the students, it is very important to keep tasks of a similar size, and approve task once the participant have done roughly what the original task required, and give the participant a new task to continue their work.
I recall one year I let a student keep working on a task as the scope grew beyond the original task, and I extended time and I was most appreciative of their work, and I emphasised to them that quality was more important than quantity. But in fact, the rules are that quantity is the first criteria. Quality is only relevant for deciding between the top 10. fwiw, I do know that they were unlikely to be a Grand Prize winner, but I haven't checked whether I might have affected their ability to be Top 10, and thus possibly also Finalist. I do worry about that now, after knowing the winner selection process better.