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Release 0-5-20090420p1
Last modified on 2009-04-09 21:51:09.388112 by LH (Leslie Hawthorn)

Users Guide to the Google Summer of CodeTM 2009 Web Site

Welcome! This document covers use for the Melange instance running on the Google Summer of Code 2009 site.If you have a question that is not answered in this FAQ, discover a bug in the system, or have a feature request, please file an issue in the Melange issue tracker. For the sake of brevity, Google Summer of Code shall hereafter be referred to as "GSoC" throughout the documentation. For the sake of making this document more readable, the project ideas that students submit to an organization will be alternately called "proposals" and "applications."

This document is a work in progress and will be updated as additional system functionality becomes available based on the program timeline, e.g. when the student application period commences.

Quick Start Guide

More Detailed System Documentation

System Frequently Asked Questions

Quick Start Guide

  1. Getting Started - All System Users

    2. To use Melange you need a Google Account. If you're already using Gmail/Google Mail or Google Groups, the account information you use to sign are your Google Account credentials. It's preferable for you to use an existing account rather than create a new one, but that is up to you. Make sure you have Google Account information available before attempting to sign into the GSoC 2009 site.

  2. Logging on to the System
    1. Go to http://socghop.appspot.com/, the site for GSoC 2009.
    2. Sign in by following the "Sign In" the link in the top right hand corner.
      • If the links says "Sign out," you are already signed in.
      • Sign In by providing your Google Account information.

  3. Creating a Site Wide User Profile
    • User (self)
    • Organizations
    • Programs
    • Click on 'create profile' in the sidebar and enter the required information on the form that appears.
    • Click 'Save'.

    4. On the left of the page at http://socghop.appspot.com/ is a sidebar. The sidebar has three main categories:

    Below 'User (self)' in the sidebar there is a link to create a user profile. You must create a user profile to get further with Melange. The profile needs just your name and a LinkID. LinkIDs are used by Melange in the URLs of pages that Melange creates, e.g. "http://socghop.appspot.com/document/show/user/lh/foo" for a document created by user with the LinkID "lh". Your LinkID will stay the same even if later on you change your user name.

    You've now created a Site Wide user profile. The 'create profile' link will now read 'edit profile'. When you return to the GSoC 2009 site on another occasion you may need to sign in again, but you should not need to do the steps to create a user profile again. You can edit your name in this Site Wide profile at any time.

More Detailed System Documentation

  • User Roles for the GSoC 2009 Site

    • Users of Melange can have many roles. For example, a user may be an organization administrator for one organization and a mentor for the same/another organization, or a user may participate as a student one year and move on to mentor the next year. All roles are tied to the Site Wide User Profile.

    The following roles exist in Melange, the software running on the GSoC 2009 site:

    Developers: Think of developers in the traditional sense - they're the folks writing the code for Melange, pushing releases, etc. - but they are also the system administrators for socghop.appspot.com. These superusers have additional capabilities beyond those listed for all other Roles, such as the ability to clear the system data store, reset notifications, etc. If you really break something, chances are you'll need a developer to help you fix it, but try asking a Program Administrator first.

    Program Administrators: Program Administrators are Google employees who use the system to administer the program, e.g. harvest data from the system to discover how many participants we have from a particular country or to obtain your shipping address to send a t-shirt. Program Administrators can view any data within the system and have the ability to create Program Wide Documentation (e.g. FAQs) within the system. Additionally, they have all the same capabilities for those roles listed below.

    Organization Administrators: Organization administrators submit an organization's application, and have the ability to invite system users to act as mentors or co-organization admins for their accepted organization. They also have the ability to create documents that only they and their co-admins can read and write, though they can set permissions on documents such that others have read/write access. They have all the same system rights as Mentors, though if they wish to mentor a student they will also need to create a Mentor role profile. Users cannot act as an organization administrator and student for the same Program, but an organization administrator can act as an admin/mentor for another organization.

    Mentors: Mentors have the ability to review student applications and score them. They will also have the ability to submit evaluations when requested. Mentors are also able to create documents for their organization within the system. Any user has the capability to apply as a mentor for any particular organization, though note that organization administrators must accept their application. Users cannot act as both mentor and student for the same Program, but a mentor can act as an organization administrator/mentor for another organization.

    Students: Students have the ability to submit a proposal to mentoring organizations and, if accepted into the program, the ability to submit evaluations when requested. They will also be able to create documents for their organization within the system. Users cannot act as both student and mentor or organization administrator for the same Program.

  • The Site Wide User Profile

    • All roles are tied to a Site Wide User Profile consisting of a Public Name, which will displayed as your name throughout the site, and a Link ID, which will be used as part of the path for all URLs for content related to you and created by you on the site. (E.g.: http://socghop.appspot.com/document/edit/user/lh/foo for a document created by user with Link ID "lh".) All users of the system will need to create this Site Wide User Profile before taking any other action within the system.

    Please choose a Link ID that will be easily recognizable to those familiar to you, e.g. lh (since that is Leslie Hawthorn's IRC handle) or lesliehawthorn. It will make it much easier for folks later to quickly accept requests from you, etc., if your Link ID is intuitive to them.

    Note that as part of the organization application process, you can optionally specify a backup administrator. Should you wish to be able to do this as part of the application process - and it's nice to do so if you have a backup admin identified, as it helps make your application look stronger - make sure that your backup administrator has created a Site Wide User profile prior to submitting your organization's application so you are able to add her Link ID details to your application.

  • Creating a Site Wide User Profile
    1. Visit http://socghop.appspot.com.
    2. Sign in to the system using any Google Account. You can find the sign in link in the upper right hand corner of the screen.
    3. Click on "Create Profile" in the left hand navigation menu.
    4. Choose a public name and fill in the corresponding field. While there are no restrictions on which public name you can choose, it is most useful to use your real name, e.g. Leslie Hawthorn, or an alias that people will easily recognize as you, e.g. LH.
    5. Choose a Link ID and fill in the corresponding field. Your link ID will become a part of the URL path for any documents you create on the site, etc.
    6. Save your changes.

    • Once you have set your Link ID, you cannot change it. However, you can edit your Public Name at any time by clicking the "Edit Profile" link in the "User" menu in the left hand navigation menu. Note that the Edit Profile link will not appear until you have created your Site Wide User Profile.

  • Guide for Organization Administrators
    1. Submitting an Organization Application
      1. Click on "Apply to Become an Organization" in the left hand navigation menu.
      2. Choose a Link ID for your organization. Do not enter your User Site Wide Profile Link ID. The organization Link ID will be used as part of the URL path for any organization specific documents you create on the site, etc. It is best to submit a short name for your organization here, e.g. as "goog" for Google Open Source Programs Office or "nui" for The NUI Group. You cannot change your organization's Link ID once it has been created.
      3. Your Group Name should be the full, formal name of your group, e.g. The Google Open Source Programs Office or The Linux Foundation.
      4. For Public Email, please enter an email address to be used by would-be mentors or students seeking additional information. This can be an individual's email address or a mailing list address; use whichever will work best for your organization.
      5. For IRC channel and mailing list, note that these are required text fields. If your organization does not use IRC or you use forums instead of mailing lists, enter this information in these fields.
      6. For Description, please provide an overview of your organization that will be publicly displayed on its profile page should the organization be accepted. Here is an example:
        • "Google is a proud user and supporter of Open Source software and development methodologies. As a company, Google contributes back to the Open Source community in a variety of ways, including source code, Project Hosting on Google Code, and our student programs Google Summer of Code TM and the Google Highly Open Participation Contest TM. For more information on Google's open source activities, visit code.google.com/opensource."
      7. For Ideas List, please provide a URL to a page listing project suggestions for student applicants. Please note that you can either choose to provide a link to an external page for your Ideas list or you can create a document on socghop.appspot.com to house your Ideas list. If you choose to house your Ideas list at socghop.appspot.com, you will need to follow the instructions for Creating Documents at the User Level
        8. .

      2. The application form has been genercized to cover multiple uses of Melange, and this terminology has caused some confusion. When the application form refers to "members," think of this terms as equivalent to "mentors." Read "contributors" as students.

      Much of the rest of the organization application form is self-explanatory. If your backup group administrator has already created a Site Wide User Profile on socghop.appspot.com, you can enter her link ID in the Backup Group Administrator field. Otherwise, simply leave this field blank.

      Please review the Mentoring Organization/Mentor Participant Agreement and, should you agree to the terms therein, click the "I Agree to the Admin Agreement" check box. You will notice that this agreement incorporates our Program FAQs and Terms of Service by reference. Make sure you have reviewed these documents prior to agreeing.

      Once you have agreed to the Admin Agreement, save your changes. Clicking the Save Changes button submits the application, and you are then returned to the organization application edit form. The application might not have been submitted if there was an error somewhere on the form, e.g. a required field missing. Such an error will be shown in red - but you may need to scroll down to find it. There isn't a warning message at the top of the page to tell you that there was a problem, but you will see an "Application Saved" confirmation message to say that a submit was successful. You can confirm the status by visiting the Programs->GSoC 2009->List My Organization Applications link in the left hand navigation menu.

      You will be able to edit your submitted organization application until the application submission deadline by visiting Programs->GSoC 2009->List My Organization Applications link in the left hand navigation menu. Following the deadline, you cannot update your application. Should your organization be accepted, you will be able to update much of the information you submitted, including your student application template, via updates to your organization profile.

      You can expect an email - sent to the address you gave when signing into the system - from Google's Program Administration Team notifying you whether or not your organization was accepted. Emails will be sent on March 18th.

    2. Updating Your Accepted Organization's Profile

      3. Once your organization has been accepted, you will receive an email notifying you of acceptance. This email will be sent to the email address tied to the Google Account you used to sign in to socghop.appspot.com. Alternatively, you can visit socghop.appspot.com, sign in to the system, and review the notification of acceptance in your Notifications list, available from the left hand navigation menu. Either way, you will need to click the link in the Notification message to complete your Organization's Profile.

      Much of the information you entered when submitting your organization's application to the program will pre-populate to the Organization Profile page. The information requested is also largely self-explanatory, but here are some tips for filling out this page:

  • Short name: Please choose a short name for your organization that will be used for listing it in your left hand navigation menu, e.g. Google for Google's Open Source Programs Office or PSF for the Python Software Foundation.
  • For the Address Information for your organization, please fill in the address where your organization has offices. If your organization does not have offices, please fill in a contact address for the organization, e.g. the address for your organization administrator. This address will be used to contact the organization provided attempts to reach anyone via email, etc. fail. If the shipping address for your organization is the same as the other physical address information entered, you can simply not fill in the shipping address fields.

 

The next step will be to create your Organization Administrator Profile.

  1. Creating Your Organization Administrator Profile

    2. Since users of Melange can have many roles, e.g. Organization Administrator for Foo while a mentor for Bar, each role is linked to a personal profile page. An organization administrator role profile is required for each organization for which you are an org admin.

    Once you have completed editing your organization's profile, you will both receive an email and an in system notification Inviting You to Become an Organization Administrator for your Organization. Please note that the system does not recognize you as your organization's administrator until you have filled out your personal profile.

    To begin editing your organization administrator role profile, either click the link in the notification email you received (Subject: "Invitation to become an Organization Admin for [Organization Name]" or the link available in the new in system notification you received (accessible from the left hand navigation menu).

    To become your group's organization administrator, click the "Accept" button. If you have chosen not to act as your group's organization administrator, you will need to complete your personal profile and then invite a new administrator to take your place.

    The information requested on this page is largely self-explanatory. Please note that if your address in the Contact Info section is the same as that which you'd enter for Shipping Info, you can leave the Shipping Info section blank.

    By clicking Publish My Location, you are agreeing to us including you in our annual map linking Students to Mentors (for an example see the GSoC 2008 page) and to display your location (City, State/Province, Country level only) on your public profile page in the system. You can further manipulate your location using the Map field on the page.

    Please note that Organization Administrators who submitted their organization's application for GSoC 2009 do not need to accept the Mentor Organization/Mentor Participant Agreement again since they already accepted it as part of the application process. Once you have completed your Organization Administrator Profile, click on Save Changes. You can edit your organization administrator profile at any time by clicking the "Edit My Admin Profile" link in the left hand navigation menu.

    The next step will be to create an Organization home page for your organization.

  2. Creating Your Organization's Home Page on the GSoC 2009 Site

    3. Now that you have signed up to be your group's organization administrator, you will need to create a home page within the site for your organization. You do this by creating a document that you would like to see displayed as your Organization's Home Page within the system. See Creating Documents at the Organization level. Once you have created this document, specify this document's link ID for this document in the Home page Document Link ID field on your Organization's Profile Page.

    It is a good idea to list all public viewable documents for your organization on your home page document to make it easiest for users to find them.

  3. Inviting Other Mentors/Organization Administrators

    4. In general, it is best for would-be mentors to apply to become mentors rather than an organization administrator having to invite them each individually. This simply saves time for the organization administrator; it is not a requirement in the workflow. It is also useful to invite yourself to be a mentor for your own organization so that you can be assigned to student proposals that you would like to mentor. If you do not wish to mentor any students, there is no need to complete this step.

    Additional organization administrators must be invited to become organization administrators. This might have been done by listing them as backup administrators in the program application, which triggers an invitation to them to complete their organization administrator role profile for your organization once its application is accepted. Alternatively, any user who has completed a site wide profile can be invited to become an organization administrator.

    Once other people from your organization have created a Site Wide User Profile, you can then invite them to participate in the program as mentors or organization administrators. Please note that individuals can also apply to become mentors for your organization, and as the organization's administrator you will be able to accept or reject their applications. To invite individuals to participate as either Mentors for your Organization or as a co-Organization Administrator, simply click on the link Invite an Admin or Invite a Mentor in the left hand navigation menu. Then enter the individual's link ID in the Link ID field.

    The user invited to become an admin or a mentor will receive an email invitation to become an admin/mentor and will be prompted to fill out a profile for the invited role, provided she accepts the invitation to become an admin/mentor.

    Organization administrators can invite users who are already accepted mentors for their org to become organization administrators at any time. Invite the user as an administrator using the steps detailed above.

  4. Accepting Requests to be a Mentor for Your Organization

    5. Once a user has applied to be a mentor for an accepted organization, that organization's administrator will be able to view their application in their organization's request list. To find the request list, look in the left hand navigation menu. For each accepted organization application for which you are an organization administrator, there will be a collapsible menu item, listed in alphabetical order by the short name provided when submitting the organization application.

    Under that organization's short name, click on the "List Requests and Invites" link. This page will provide an overview of all requests received to become a mentor for the organization, and all invitations sent to users to become mentors or org admins.

    New requests from users applying to become mentors will appear in the first table on the page, "An overview of the organization's incoming requests." To respond to a request to mentor, simply click on the hyperlinked Link ID of the user who submitted the request. You can then choose to accept, reject or ignore the request to become a mentor.

    Accepting a request to become a mentor triggers an invitation email and in system notification to the accepted mentor to fill out a mentor role profile for your organization.

    Rejecting a request to become a mentor does not trigger any notification to the user. However, the user is welcome to reapply to your organization.

    Ignoring an application to become a mentor does not trigger any notification to the user. A user cannot reapply as a mentor when their request status is ignored, so use this button for spam requests or when obtaining more information about a mentor applicant. You can always change the request status by visiting the 3rd table on the List Requests and Invites page for your organization, "An overview of the Organization's ignored requests."

  5. Maintaining Roles for Your Mentors and Organization Administrators

    6. Organization administrators can remove mentors and other organization administrators from their organization, though these users are able to once again request to mentor / be invited as a organization administrators. Organization administrators wishing to review a list of their organization's mentors and admins can do so by clicking on the "Manage Admins and Mentors" link in the left hand navigation menu (linked below the organization's short name).

    On this page, there will be two table views, one listing all mentors and the other all organization administrators for the org. Clicking on the hyperlinked organization ID on a particular users entry (sorted by Link ID) will bring up a page allowing the organization administrator to "Resign" the user. Should the organization administrator wish to take no action, she can simply navigate away from the page or click the cancel button.

  6. How to Resign Organization Administrator Status

    7. Should an organization administrator no longer wish to be in this capacity, she can click the "Resign as Admin" link in the left hand navigation menu. The user can then simply click "Resign" or, if navigating to the page accidentally, she can navigate away or press the cancel button.

    N.B. - Should you be the only organization administrator for your organization and you resign as its admin, there is no way to add you back without help from a Developer or Program Administrator. Try pinging in #melange on Freenode for help first. Alternatively, you can email Leslie Hawthorn for support.

  • Guide for Mentors
    1. Applying to Become a Mentor

      2. Once an organization has had its application accepted, anyone who has created a site wide profile can apply to that organization as a mentor. To complete this action, simply click on the "Apply to Become a Mentor" link in the left hand navigation menu, then click on the hyperlinked name of the organization to which you would like to apply as a mentor. Review the information listed, then click submit. The organization administrator(s) for that organization will receive a request to review your mentor application.

    2. Creating and Editing Your Mentor Profile

      3. If your application is accepted, you will receive an email and an in system notification asking you to complete a mentor role profile for the organization which accepted your application. Please note that a mentor role profile is required for each organization for which you are a mentor.

      The information requested on the mentor profile page is largely self-explanatory. Please note that if your address in the Contact Info section is the same as that which you'd enter for Shipping Info, you can leave the Shipping Info section blank.

      By clicking Publish My Location, you are agreeing to us including you in our annual map linking Students to Mentors (for an example see the GSoC 2008 page) and to display your location (City, State/Province, Country level only) on your public profile page in the system. You can further manipulate your location using the Map field on the page.

      Please review the Mentoring Organization/Mentor Participant Agreement and, should you agree to the terms therein, click the "I Agree to the Admin Agreement" check box. You will notice that this agreement incorporates our Program FAQs and Terms of Service by reference. Make sure you have reviewed these documents prior to agreeing.

      You can edit your mentor profile at any time after creating it by clicking on the "Edit My Mentor Profile" in the left hand navigation menu.

    3. How to Become an Organization Administrator if You are Currently a Mentor

      4. A user cannot apply to become an organization administrator; she must be invited to become an organization administrator. Users who are already accepted as mentors for a particular organization can be invited to become an Organization Administrator for that organization by receiving an invite from an existing Org Admin.

  • Guide to Reviewing and Ranking Student Applications - Mentors & Org Admins

    This section is a work in progress. More will be added to it to explain the student allocation process, etc., later.

    1. Reviewing Applications

      2. To review student proposals, click on "View all Student Proposals" link underneath your organization's short name in the left hand navigation menu. You can then visit each proposal individually by clicking on the hyperlinked student link ID in the proposals table on this page.

      Applications that are clearly spam, meaning there is no substantive proposal in the application, should immediately be marked as ineligible by clicking the "Mark as Ineligible" button. While deciding whether an application is spam is somewhat subjective, you should know a spam application when you see it. If it appears the student only spent two minutes writing the application or the proposal text consists only of phrases like "I would really like to work with you." then it's spam. Mark it as such. Proposals marked as spam will be removed from your organization's "View all Student Proposals" list view. Please note that you cannot mark an application as Ineligible once it has been scored or a comment appended to it. If you mark an application as ineligible, you can still view it by visiting the application through the "View all Student Proposals" list view. As of 4/8/09, if you discover you have accidentally marked an application ineligible and you need to change its state, you can do so.

      Once proposals are undergoing review, there will be up to three tables on the "View all Student Proposals" page; one for new applications that have not been reviewed (meaning no comments were made on them nor a score assigned), one for applications under review and one for applications marked ineligible. If all applications are under review, then the new application table will not be displayed. If no applications have been marked ineligible, then the ineligible applications table will not be displayed.

      Those applications under review will have a rank assigned (#N out of Y proposals received, based on score) and will be displayed in the table in order from best to worst by rank. The application's current score will also be displayed in this table view.

    2. Subscribing to Application Updates

      3. Upon visiting a particular student application page from the "View all Student Proposals" list, you can then choose to subscribe to updates made to the application by clicking on the Subscribe to public updates and Subscribe to private updates buttons at the top left of the proposal review page. You may wish to subscribe to both public and private updates to the application depending on how interested you are in following a particular proposal. See Comments on Applications for more on public and private updates. You will receive an email notification for public and/or private updates only when you have no unread in system notifications, so either keep your queue of notifications cleared out or check back often to see if you have an alert for unread notifications under the User (self) area in the left hand navigation menu.

    3. Comments on Applications

      4. Mentors and organization administrators may post review comments to any application. Comments have different types, namely public, meaning also visible to the student, or private, meaning visible only to the organization's mentors and admins. Administrators can also add "admin comments" that are private from the perspective of the student but still visible to their fellow organization administrators and mentors. When creating a public comment, you cannot assign a score to the application.

      To post a public comment, simply fill in the comment field and ensure that "Comment Visible to Student" is selected in the drop down list. When selecting "comment visible to student", the comment will be published to the student applicant and she will receive an email notification that you have commented on her application provided she has subscribed to updates on the proposal. Note that you cannot assign a score to an application when posting a public comment, and the drop down list to add a score will not be visible in the user interface unless the Comment Type is set to "Private Comment" or "Admin Comment." Comments submitted will be logged in the Public Reviews section of the application view page.

      To post a private comment, select "Private Comment" from the drop down list. You are not required to include a score with a private comment, but you will not be able to add a score unless the comment type is set to "Private Comment" or "Admin Comment."

      "Admin Comments" basically function the same way private comments do for mentors, but with two added features. By selecting "Admin Comment," organization administrators are given the ability to assign mentors and assign an application a rank. Both features are covered in detail, below.

      All comments are color coded to make it easy to distinguish between mentor and organization administrator comments (light green) on an application and student comments (dark green) on an application. Students may add comments to their application at any time, and these will be listed in the "Public Reviews" section of the proposal review page.

    4. Scoring Applications

      5. You can assign a score to an application by selecting a score from the drop down list below the "Comment" text field. The score range goes from -4 to 4, and you can also add a comment to an application without scoring it (simply leave the drop down menu at it's default, "0: no score"). You can also give an application a score without adding any comments to it. All score changes, with or without comments, will be logged in the "Private Reviews" section of the proposal view page. Remember, if adding a public comment to an application, the score drop down list will not appear in the user interface. If you are trying to add a score but do not see any way to do so, select "Private Comment" in order to continue; organization administrators can also select "Admin Comment" for the same effect.

      Each organization should decide on their own process for scoring applications.

    5. Requesting Mentorship of a Particular Proposal

      6. If you wish to act as a mentor for a particular project proposal, you can request to do so by clicking the "I am willing to mentor this student" button. Clicking this button will cause your name to be listed in the "Possible Mentors" section of the proposal review page. Should you later change your mind and decide you would prefer to mentor a different application, click the "I am no longer willing to mentor this student" button and your name will be removed from the possible mentors listing.

      Only an organization administrator can assign a particular mentor to an application. Make sure to click the "I am willing to mentor this student" button to let your organization administrator know of your interest. Even if an application already has a mentor assigned, it is worthwhile to click the "I am willing to mentor" button in case the assigned mentor decides she is no longer will to mentor. If you no longer wish to mentor, make sure to inform your organization administrator of this by clicking on the "I am no longer willing to mentor this student."

      Very Important: Once an application is assigned to a particular mentor, clicking the "I am no longer willing to mentor this student" button does not cause the user to be unassigned as the mentor for a particular application. The user's name, however, will disappear from the list of Potential Mentors for a proposal. If you would like to have an application that you are no longer willing to mentor assigned to a different user, please contact your organization administrator.

    6. Organization Admins Only - Assigning Mentors

      7. Organization administrators only have the right to assign a particular mentor to an application. They can do so by selecting "Admin Comment" in the "Comment Type" drop down list and then entering a particular mentor's Link ID in the "Assign Mentor" field. In order for an organization administrator to assign herself as the student's mentor, she will need to have completed a mentor role profile for the organization. The organization administrator can change the assigned mentor at any time by updating the Link ID in the "Assign Mentor" field.

    7. Organization Admins Only - Assigning an Application a Rank

      8. An organization administrator also has the ability to manipulate the rank of a particular proposal to ensure that it is accepted, regardless of a previous score or ranking. In other words, an organization may receive 2 slots and decide it was to accept application "Foo" and application "Bar." The organization administrator may visit the applications for "Foo" and "Bar" and manually assign them a rank of "1" and "2", meaning these two applications will then be the topped 2 ranked applications. The top N ranked applications, where N is the number of student slots Google allocates to each organization, will be those that are accepted into the program.

      This feature is meant to make it easier for organizations to make the final choice about which proposals will be accepted after duplicate accepted students are resolved, etc.

    8. Guide for Students
      1. Registering as a Student on the GSoC 2009 Site

        2. Before you can submit a proposal to any organization, you must have first created a Site Wide User Profile. If you have not completed this step, you will not be able to register as a student or submit any applications for GSoC 2009.

        After creating your Site Wide User Profile, you will need to register as a student. Click on the Register as a Student Link in the left hand navigation menu. You will be redirected to a page to provide various personal details for your Student Role Profile.

      2. Updating Your Student Role Profile
        1. Name on documents: This field will accept UTF-8 text input. The information you provide here will be used to create certificates of completion for successful student participants in GSoC 2009, so the student applicant should enter her name exactly as she would like it to appear on the certificate of completion.
        2. Phone Number: Enter your phone number using only numbers, no spaces, dashes, dots, etc. Make sure to include your country code. For example, if your phone number is +1.650.253.0000, where "1" is the country code for the United States, you would enter 16502530000 in this field.
        3. Publish My Location: By checking this box, you are agreeing to allow Google to include you in our annual map linking Students to Mentors (for an example see the GSoC 2008 page) and to display your location (City, State/Province, Country level only) on your public profile page in the system. You can further manipulate your location using the Map field on the page.
        4. School Name: Please enter the full name of your school, college or university in this field. Please use the complete formal name of your school, e.g. UC Berkeley instead of Cal or UCB. It would be most wonderful if you could provide your school's name in English, as all the program administrators speak English as their first language and it will make it much easier for us to assemble program statistics, etc., later if we can easily read the name of your school.
        5. Degree: Select undergrad if you have never before received a degree from college or university. Select masters if you are obtaining a masters degree and PhD if you are in the process of obtaining your doctorate.

        3. Much of the information requested on this page is self-explanatory. Unless otherwise indicated, all fields must be filled in using only US-ASCII characters, as the information provided is used to ship items like t-shirts, etc., to accepted students. Sadly, shipping software in the United States doesn't understand the concept of Unicode. A few fields on the student role profile page, however, are not necessarily intuitive for those unfamiliar with GSoC.

        Once you have completed the Student Role Profile page, and agreed to the Student Participant Agreement, click submit to save your profile. You can make changes to your Student Role Profile at any time by visiting the Roles link in the left hand navigation menu. Once your profile has been saved, you can begin submitting proposals to whichever organization(s) you wish.

      3. Submitting Your Proposal

        4. A student may submit up to 20 proposals to whatever mix of organizations he chooses, e.g. all 20 to one organization or 2 to four different organization or only one to one organization. In general, quality is better than quantity, so consider this when writing your applications.

        To submit a proposal, click on the Submit your Student Proposal link in the left hand navigation menu. You will be redirected to a screen allowing you to choose which organization you would like to submit an application to. If you do not see the organization you are looking for, try using the next link to go to subsequent pages of the organization list until you find the one that you're seeking.

        Click on the hyperlinked name of the organization that you would like to apply to. You will be redirected to the proposal submission screen. If the organization has provided an application template that they would like you to use when submitting your proposal, it will be provided to you in the "Content" text area on the page.

        Make the title for your abstract as specific as possible, e.g. "Updates to increase performance in ZFS" rather than "Application for Org Foo for GSoC." Making your title specific will make it much easier for mentors to later review your application. The abstract section of the proposal page should be no more than 500 characters and should provide a brief overview of your proposed project's goals. Accepted students will later have their project abstracts publicly published on the GSoC 2009 site. Enter whatever details you would like in the Content section of your proposal, but make sure to use the organization's application template if they have provided one. You can also provide a link to further information, e.g. additional details on your personal website, in the Additional Info field, though this is not required.

        Once you have added the required information, click submit. You should see "Student Proposal saved." at the top of the proposal page if the submission was successful. You can edit the Content and Additional Info section of your proposal at any time during the student application period, but not after the applications submission deadline. You can edit the Abstract portion of your application at any time. To submit additional proposals, repeat the steps listed in this section.

        To review which proposals you have submitted or to make edits to your proposal, click on "List my Student Proposals" in the left hand navigation menu. Clicking on your hyperlinked Link ID next to the appropriate proposal title will take you to the saved copy of your proposal. You can then click the "Edit my Proposal" link next to the title of your proposal, review mentor comments on your proposal, or add your own comments to your proposal.

        You should also subscribe to updates to your proposal, as mentors may post comments to your application requesting more detail.

      4. Subscribing to Updates to Your Proposal

        5. Mentors can post comments on a student application as part of the review process. Some of the comments are private, meaning only mentors and organizations administrators for that organization can see them; some are public comments, meaning the student applicant, mentors and organizations administrators for that organization can see the comments. Often mentors and organization administrators reviewing your application will use public comments to contact you to request further information, invite you to join a mailing list, etc. In order to make it easy for you to know when a public comment has been added to your application, you can subscribe to updates on a per application basis.

        To subscribe to updates to your proposal, click on "List my Student Proposals" in the left hand navigation menu. Clicking on your hyperlinked Link ID next to the appropriate proposal title will take you to the saved copy of your proposal. Then simply click on the Subscribe to updates button at the top left of the page. Each time a public comment is posted to your application, you will receive an email notification provided you have no unread in system notifications, so either keep your queue of notifications cleared out or check back often to see if you have an alert for unread notifications under the User (self) area in the left hand navigation menu.

      5. Comments on Your Proposal

        6. You can add comments to your proposal once it has been submitted both during the application submission and review phases. To add a comment to your application, click on "List my Student Proposals" in the left hand navigation menu. Clicking on your hyperlinked Link ID next to the appropriate proposal title will take you to the saved copy of your proposal. Add your comments in the Comment field and click submit. Your comments will be listed in the "Public Reviews" section at the bottom of the page, along with any public comments submitted by mentors and organization administrators reviewing your application. All mentors and organization administrators who have subscribed to updates to your proposal will receive an email letting them know that you have updated your proposal.

      6. Notification of Proposal Outcome

        7. All students will receive an email letting them know whether or not a given proposal was accepted. You may submit up to 20 proposals, but only one will be accepted. This means that you may receive multiple emails regarding your submitted proposals. Emails will not be sent until 20 April, 2009.

    9. Creating Documents
      • At the start of your document, add this sentence: "To edit this document, click here", where here should be hyperlinked to the editable page.
      • The editable URL of any page is found by changing "show" in the page URL to "edit," e.g. http://socghop.appspot.com/document/show/program/google/gsoc2009/faqs would change to http://socghop.appspot.com/document/edit/program/google/gsoc2009/faqs.
      • It is also worth noting to a user that if they do not have access to edit the document, they will not be able to do so after clicking the "here" link.

      10. The Melange framework gives each user the ability to create multiple documents within the system. One use of documents is to create an Organization Home Page on the GSoC 2009 site, but these documents can also be used to house an organization's Ideas list, take notes to share within the organization, publish status reports, etc.

      Right now, it is not intuitive in the User Interface when you can edit a document or not. There is a feature request on file to fix this by adding an edit button to documents which a given user has access to edit. In the interim, use the following workaround in order to make it clear to system users that they can edit a document.

       

    10. Types of Documents

      11. While Developers and Program Administrators can create other types of documents, users of the system can only create User documents (all users) or Organization documents (Organization Administrators and Mentors only).

    11. Organization Level Document Read/Write Permissions
    12. Organization Level Documents have the following write access options:
      • Admin: Only organization administrators have access to edit the document.
      • Member: Only organizations administrators, mentors and students of the organization will have access to edit the document.
      • Restricted: Only organization administrators, mentors and Melange Developers have access to edit the document.
      • User: Any user who is logged in to socghop.appspot.com has access to edit the document.
      Organization Level Documents have the following read access options:
      • Admin: Only organization administrators have access to read the document.
      • Member: Only organizations administrators, mentors and students of the organization will have access to read the document.
      • Public: Anyone, including people not logged into the system, can view the document. (This is useful when publishing status reports, etc., for interested parties who may not wish to participate in the program.)
      • Restricted: Only organization administrators, mentors and Melange Developers have access to read the document.
      • User: Any user who is logged in to the GSoC 2009 site has access to read the document.

      13.  

    13. User Level Document Read/Write Permissions
      User Level Documents have the following write access options:
      • Admin: Only the user who created the document has access to read it.
      • Member: Only other members of the user's mentoring organization will have access to read the document.
      • Public: Anyone, including people not logged into the system, can view the document. (This is useful when publishing status reports, etc., for interested parties who may not wish to participate in the program.)
      • Restricted: Only the user and Melange Developers have access to read the document.
      User Level Documents have the following read access options:
      • User: Any user who is logged in to the GSoC 2009 site has access to read the document.
      • Admin: Only the user has access to edit the document.
      • Member: Only other members of the user's mentoring organization will have write access to the document.
      • Restricted: Only the user and Melange Developers have access to edit the document.
      • User: Any user who is logged in to socghop.appspot.com has access to edit the document.

      14. Unless otherwise noted, developers and program administrators have read/write access to all documents on the GSoC 2009 site.

    14. Creating Documents at the Organization level
      1. In the left hand navigation menu, expand the section for your accepted organization if it is not already expanded.
      2. Click on Create a New Document.
      3. Fill in the required fields and user the Content area to create the page for your organization.

      15. Unless otherwise noted, developers and program administrators have read/write access to all documents on the GSoC 2009 site.

      You can save changes at any time, but if you are editing a work in progress, you may wish to reset the Read Access and Write Access Section to Admin until you're done editing. In the case of an Organization Home Page, you must set Access levels to Read Access: Public so that all visitors to the GSoC 2009 site will be able to learn more about your organization. Set Write Access to whatever level your organization feels is appropriate.

      Once you have finished editing the Organization Home Page, you can click the "Is Featured" check box and a link to the page will appear in left hand navigation menu for your Organization. Organization Home Page documents do not need to be marked as featured to appear in the left hand navigation menu.

    15. Creating Documents at the User Level
      1. In the left hand navigation menu, expand your "User" section if it is not already expanded.
      2. Click on Create a New Document.
      3. Fill in the required fields and user the Content area to create your page.

      16. You can save changes at any time, but if you are editing a work in progress, you may wish to reset the Read Access and Write Access Section to Admin until you're done editing. Set Write Access to whatever level you feel is appropriate.

      Once you have finished editing your user document, you can click the "Is Featured" check box and a link to the page will appear in your user left hand navigation menu.

      If you want to feature a user document on your organization's sidebar, then you need to cut and paste it from the user version into a new version of the document created under your organization.

      System Frequently Asked Questions

      Many thanks to James Crook for his help in creating this documentation.