What went wrong

[erangamapa]

Hi,

I have applied for gsoc with phpBB with two proposals. But I ended up being not getting selected to any of them.
I beleve that I have contributed a fairly to phpBB in past few months and proven that I can do it.
But I am surprised with the student selection. I want to know what went wrong. Why I did not get selected.
Weather my proposals are weak or my contribution to phpBB in past few months is useless.

Thanks!!

[Marshalrusty]

Hi,

Would you like us to reply to your question publicly, or would you prefer to reach out to one of us via IRC or email?

[EXreaction]

Every mentor reviewed all submissions for a number of criteria, including how well designed and thought out they thought the proposal was, whether or not certain details, such as interest in writing good unit tests, came through in the proposal, what input the users have had previously in the phpBB project (bug tickets, pull requests, etc), how strong the student's coding skills seemed to be based on previous work with phpBB and any other examples they provided, and how well the mentor thought they would be able to work with the student (timezones, availability, English skill level, previous experiences with the student, etc).

We read through many good proposals and mentors had difficult choices to make based on all of that criteria. We believe that, based on the information that was given in the proposal, mentors selected the student who would work the best with them to complete the project, but in many cases it was very difficult to rate certain aspects because, for the most part, mentors had little to no experience with the students who submitted the proposals. Not getting selected to be a GSoC student with phpBB does not mean we did not think you were capable of fulfilling the task, nor does it mean we did not think you wouldn't be able to become a great contributor to phpBB in the future. In fact, we sincerely hope that all who applied to phpBB continue to contribute their knowledge and experience to phpBB so that it may become an even greater product in the future.

[erangamapa]

I expected a specific answer so that I can improve myself. If that is possible, I would like to have it via email.

Anyway thanks Exreaction.

[EXreaction]

The best recommendation I can give if you're interested in applying next year is just to continue contributing to the project (this applies to anyone who may want to apply next year as well). The more we see you and get to know you, the better informed we'll be about you and your capabilities when we have to make the decision next year, and the better informed we are, the better the decision we make will be.

[erangamapa]

Well what I am asking is what did I missed. Weaknesses of my proposals and what went wrong with my approach in contributing to phpBB. Compared to others who got selected.

From your answer what I understand is
Each and everyone who got selected have been contributing for a long time and phpBB community got to know them all better than me.
But I doubt that.

This is my last gsoc which I missed.

[keith10456]

@ erangamapa - If you don't mind sharing, what contribution(s) did you apply for?

I ask because you can still contribute code, etc, even though it won't be part of GSOC.

[EXreaction]

I did not intend to suggest that those who were selected had been contributing for a long time already, in fact many have not. What I was trying to say is that knowing candidates better helps us make better decisions and the more we knew a specific candidate the more likely we probably were to choose them (if we felt they were a good fit with the mentor handling the project and if we felt they would be able to complete the project).

If you want someone to go over your proposal and discuss what areas we felt were not as strong as they could have been, someone might be willing to do that, but we do have limited resources and do not have the time to go over and discuss the proposals of every candidate who was not selected.

[wGEric]

I did not intend to suggest that those who were selected had been contributing for a long time already, in fact many have not. What I was trying to say is that knowing candidates better helps us make better decisions and the more we knew a specific candidate the more likely we probably were to choose them (if we felt they were a good fit with the mentor handling the project and if we felt they would be able to complete the project).

Wouldn't it make more sense to select people that aren't already involved in the project so that more people are involved? Selecting people that are already involved isn't going to increase the number of people that are involved.

[EXreaction]

That was also taken into consideration, but we also want to make sure mentors and mentees work well together and that the project will be able to be completed. If we don't think a student would be able to complete the project based on their proposal and we don't know them, it is not very likely we'll choose that student for a project, but if we know the student already and know they will be able to complete the project, then we won't need to judge whether we think they will be able to do it based on their proposal alone.

All else equal, bringing in new people is always a good thing, but people whom we don't know well will need stronger proposals and good examples of previous experience that will tell us that they are capable of completing the project.