[SoC] Commenting on Applications

[Frank Warmerdam]

Paul Kelly wrote:
> I'm concerned slightly that there may be a conflict of interest between 
> trying to get as many students accepted as we can at this stage and keep 
> them on board, and trying to determine which students are good and 
> definitely worth chasing after. My attitude is definitely the latter; I 
> don't want to end up mentoring a student who is lazy or hasn't got a 
> good grasp of the task. I hope this sounds reasonable?

Paul,

I think it is reasonable for you to only agree to mentor a student that
you are comfortable will fit your expectations.  But please take some care
to avoid scaring off students that others might be willing to coddle a bit
more with particularly harsh comments.

> I also felt last year there was a bit of an inconsistency in the scores 
> given between different mentors and different organisations - do we have 
> any OSGeo-specific guidelines for this?

Assuming we do things similarly to last year, the scores we provide
now do not really mean very much.  Ultimately each project will be
expected to present Wolf with a prioritized list of projects and mentors
which he will interleave into a final list, adjusting scores arbitrarily
to get the right ranking.

It doesn't hurt to provide scores now to develop some sense of what people
think, but there is no point trying to achieve consistent scoring (very
difficult!) when they have little final effect.  (IMHO)

Best regards,
-- 
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I set the clouds in motion - turn up   | Frank Warmerdam, warmerdam at pobox.com
light and sound - activate the windows | http://pobox.com/~warmerdam
and watch the world go round - Rush    | President OSGeo, http://osgeo.org