[SoC] Communicating with potential students

[Jody Garnett]

Depends -

We had some users show up on our IRC meeting or developers list - we can 
answer their questions there in public.
If we hunt then down for discussion privately that may be viewed as 
interfering with the process.

I am not sure if students get to revise their submission or not (by the 
time we see the submission with an O(n^3) it may already be too late).

Great
- they contact us through official channels; public discussion on the 
development lists
Good:
- we hunt down a student for public discussion before deadline
Bad:
- we hunt down a student for private discussion prior to deadline

For feedback after the deadline we can contact the students (for ones 
that have a great idea and make
the cut you are probably still interested in their volunteer time); 
individual developer lists may want to talk about submissions as part of 
figuring out
who can mentor what.

Cheers,
Jody


Wolf Bergenheim wrote:
> On the subject of fairness. Do you people think that we should discuss
> the applications with the students, and give feedback? I remember back
> in 2004? 2005? When I applied to the SoC I didn't get any feedback and
> that was just plain annoying :( But does it give an unfair advantage if
> we coach the would be students at the application level? Take the newest
> GRASS application (Shortest path in free (vector) space avoiding
> obstacles module in GRASS), he talks about a O(n^3) algorithm... Which
> is worse then bad. Should I let him know what I think, and that I'd
> probably not accept an O(n^3) algorithm, when better ones are available
> (in this case the rotational sweep)? How much communication do you think
> is suitable? My personal feeling is that we should probably talk to the
> students as much as we can to help them hone their application, in order
> to get the best possible deliverable out of this.
>
> Sorry to take up so much of everybody's time and band with, but I just
> want to do this right.
>
> --Wolf
>
>