Re: [boost] [review queue] Proposed new policy to enter the review queue

Subject: Re: [boost] [review queue] Proposed new policy to enter the review queue
From: Niall Douglas (s_sourceforge_at_[hidden])
Date: 2017-03-17 13:25:53

> I was going to say: The GSoC-students seem to have similar problems
> finding all the information they need. (There is a "Google Summer of
> Code" link under the "Community" menu on the Boost-website but from
> there I did not find the current GSoC project-page of Boost. A
> Google-search found it instead.)

Actually no, what you're seeing there is students who don't feel like
reading the instructions and ask here if they really need to do work as
the instructions say because they don't want to do the competency test,
or read an instructions page longer than a few paragraphs.

You may not be aware, but as part of our GSoC application will fill in
an extensive list of links and documentation, and Google hand checks
those for suitability before we are approved as an org. Any GSoC student
cannot fail to be told what they need to do. Furthermore, I've
cultivated extensively the SEO ranking of the GSoC information for Boost
over the years, and each year I verify it ranks at the top of the search
results for "google summer of code C++" and variations thereof.

GSoC at Boost is one of the most competitive GSoCs around with an
oversubscription ratio of at least 7:1 which suggests students are
finding us easily. We set an extremely high bar, indeed so high it
worries us that we are being exclusionary and Google since the recent
admin changes is not massively happy with it either. However since I
introduced the changes which raised that bar we've had much more
successful summers, in the past about half the student projects were
disappointing because the student just wasn't up to the coding ability
needed. In the last few GSoCs we've had more problems with student work
ethic than coding ability, which is a nice problem to have.

Nevertheless it's a fine line to tread, and whoever takes over from me
after my time as admin finishes will take a different balance.

Niall

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