Re: Google Code-In 2011: Tasks wanted!

[Chris Leonard <cjlhomeaddress gmail com>]

On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 6:18 PM, Andre Klapper <ak-47 gmx net> wrote:

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Google Code-In starts again.
GNOME took part in it last year already.


=== What is Google Code-in (GCI)? ===

You might call it the "small sister" of Google Summer of Code.
It is a contest for 13-17 year old highschool students.
Tasks take 3-5 days and have a mentor assigned.

Tasks can be in several categories:
* Code: Tasks related to writing or refactoring code
* Documentation: Tasks related to creating/editing documents
* Outreach: Tasks related to community management and outreach/marketing
* Quality Assurance: Tasks related to testing and ensuring code is of high quality
* Research: Tasks related to studying a problem and recommending solutions
* Training: Tasks related to helping others learn more
* Translation: Tasks related to localization
* User Interface: Tasks related to user experience research or user interface design and interaction

For more info check out
http://www.google-melange.com/gci/document/show/gci_program/google/gci2011/about


=== How to participate ===

GNOME needs 5 tasks in each of the 8 categories (=40 tasks in total)
until October 31st in order to participate in GCI.
That's in a few days already, so hurry up if you have an idea!
That would be the first batch of tasks.
A second batch would be published on December 16th.

Tasks need a clear description, one or more defined mentors, an expected
timeframe to solve them, and difficulty (easy, medium, hard).

More info for mentors is available here:
http://code.google.com/p/google-code-in/wiki/GCIAdminMentorInformation

No ideas? Check out for example KDE's list:
http://community.kde.org/GoogleCodeIn/2011/Ideas

You could even add generic tasks: Add three GCI tasks "Fix a bug of your
choice for the product $foo in GNOME Bugzilla" (one easy, one medium and
one hard), let the student pick a bug, and then tell her/him whether to
claim the easy, medium or hard task for it.


=== Criticism from last year ===

...as it helps to avoid wrong expectations:
GCI is not GSoC. There is not enough time to create an "emotional
binding" to the project that the student works on.
I'd rather call it "drive-by contributions".

Patches might need several iterations and you will need to be both
patient and reactive (as students cannot claim a new task until their
patch has been reviewed and marked as completed by mentors).
It might be helpful to mention in task descriptions your availability,
e.g. that you also have free weekends or don't plan to review
submissions on christmas holidays.


But all in all it is a good way to help young people to get a first idea
of FOSS and contributing to it, and to create some future contributors.

Are you in?

If so, go to https://live.gnome.org/GoogleCodeIn and add some ideas to
https://live.gnome.org/GoogleCodeIn/Tasks !

Unless you just list a lot of individual languages and files like the KDE folks, it acn be challenging t o come up with five i18n / L10n tasks.  However, I took a shot at some ideas I had floating around in my head and I'm providing drafts for 2 here for comment / improvement.

The first would be enhancing the utility of open-tran.eu and the second is just a more traditional QC checking step that (IMHO) should be done more than it currently is.

cjl

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Task Description:

Develop web-page for semi-automated checking of PO files for matches to open-tran.eu strings.

Expected results:  The Open-Tran database pulls localization from large upstream projects:

http://open-tran.eu/projects.html

and provides a search capability on a phrase-by-phrase basis.  It would be desirable to be able to upload a PO file and walk through it string-by-string making manual judgement calls about quality of the match to get a rapid start on a L10n effort.

This is useful for (A) identification for harmonization of English strings between FOSS projects (i18n improvement) when performed English > English

and (B) also for the transfer of translated strings between projects (with native speaker human judgement in the loop).

Requirements:
Web-coding skills

DIfficuly:

Estimated Time:

Mentor:

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Task Description:

Run poconflict and inverted poconflict analysis of individual languages PO files from Damned Lies server.

Expected results: 
Identified instances where the same English phrase is translated in different ways with poconflicts.

Identify instances where the same foreign language string is used for two different English phrases with inverted poconflicts analysis.

These should be investigated by a native speaker and possibly filed as L10n bugs. Not every conflict identified is necessarily an error, but they are often worth investigation.

Requirements:

Translate Toolkit
http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/toolkit/poconflicts

Downloaded PO files from Damned Lies


Difficuly:

Estimated Time:

Mentor:

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