This page describes the ranking process The Apache Software Foundation uses to evaluate mentee proposals.

The ranking process makes sure the most promising applicants get a mentor with an ASF project. The goal is not to identify the “best” projects for the ASF, but the best mentees who have applied to the ASF.

Remember, mentoring is all about the mentee and open source as a whole. It is not about the mentors or their projects.

Any ASF committer can help with the ranking: all you need to do is register as a potential mentor (you don’t actually have to become a mentor).

The instructions below described ranking proposals using the Google Summer of Code application.

Scoring System

We rank projects using this scoring system:

Pre-Selection Phase : a mentor does this when accepting to be mentor of a given proposal

Please only offer to mentor a single project unless you have discussed why you should mentor more than one on mentors@community.apache.org first. We encourage multiple mentors per project, though.

Other community members are free to comment on proposals as they see fit. In the re-evaluation phase (see below) admins use comments provided by mentors and community members.

Selection Phase : a mentor does this during ranking time

In this phase mentors evaluate each proposal. We do all scoring in the Google Docs spreadsheet shared on mentors@community.apache.org. Add an explanation to every score, using the criteria below, to help admins in the later stages of evaluation. DO NOT ADD SCORES IN MELANGE! Use integer numbers only!

Please do not add scores outside these criteria.

Address any questions to the admins on mentors@community.apache.org

Other community members are free to comment on proposals inside Melange as they see fit. However, DO NOT ADD A SCORE TO THE PROPOSAL. In the re-evaluation phase (see below) admins use comments provided by mentors and community members.

At the end of the selection phase proposals to be considered for support will have a score of between 0 and +19, and should only have scores from the assigned mentor and admins (at this stage admin scores are only corrections). The admins check in periodically during the selection phase to look for problems by scanning the scores (i.e. anything over +19 has an error).

At the end of this selection phase we know the minimum score a proposal must have in order to be selected (i.e. if we have 30 slots, projects with a score at or above the project ranked 30th will go forward to the next phase). Before progressing to the next phase, admins read all proposals above or near the minimum score and ensure that there are no errors in this phase of ranking.

Re-Evaluation : admins do this during or after selection phase

In this phase admins evaluate all proposals above the required score and those that are just below it. We check those just below the required score to ensure that the scores have been equally assigned across all proposals (some mentors are more generous than others).

The admins transfer the scores to Melange.

At the end of this phase there is a short window for the community to verify the admins’ work before the final selection is made.

What are we looking for in a good proposal?

In general we much prefer new mentees to repeat mentees. The goal is to enable new people to learn about open source software development.

In past years we have seen some consistent patterns in high-quality proposals:

Warning signs in a bad proposal

What happens next?

Towards the end of the ranking period Google announces how many slots the ASF has. Shortly after that we ask ASF committers to stop ranking, and the ASF GSoC admins adjust the rankings to ensure that the right number of projects are ranked above the cut-off line.

In this last stage we avoid adjusting community rankings; however, in past years there has been a cluster of students with equal rankings around the cut-off point. In this case the admins cast a final vote on those projects to ensure that Google can assign awards as appropriate.

For example, imagine that 7 is the number of points that causes the clustering, and we have the following projects ranked at 7:

A

B

C

D

E

Now imagine the cut-off point for selection is currently at the third position (C).

The admins need to look at these projects and ensure they are ordered in the webapp to make the most appropriate appear at the top of the list. This ensures that they are most likely to receive a slot. So we may end up with:

B

C

A

E

D

Unfortunately this process needs to happen very quickly and there is no time for community discussion around these points. Therefore it is important that mentors and mentees provide as much information in the previous ranking stages as possible.

The problem becomes a little more complicated when we remember that the cut-off point may move as well, so Google may give us one extra slot. So we need to ensure that all rank-7 projects are correctly ordered, not just the best.

The process of breaking clusters

Admins work through all applications, adding a +8 to all those ranked above the cut off score. This has the effect of increasing the “space” we have to work with in re-ranking the clustered projects.

Admins then work through all the clustered applications, adding scores as defined above (with a comment justifying the ranking).

If there is still a cluster of projects around the cut-off point, the lead admin looks at the mentors and projects involved. If a project/mentor already has a higher scored application, the lead admin reduces the score for this one (i.e. to try to spread the love).

It’s not practical to ask the community to comment at this point as we are on a tight deadline. We ask that the community trust the assigned admins.

Resolve conflicts

Inevitably there will be one or two students who have been accepted in multiple organizations. We resolve these conflicts during an IRC meeting with Google admins during the final hours of ranking. In these cases the admins attempt to contact mentors and students; but we sometimes have to make a judgment call on how to best resolve such conflicts, as things happen quite fast during this meeting.