Talk:GSoC Ideas 2008

Deciding status of Ideas after GSoC 2008
Gale:Although keen people would indeed have found More GSoC Ideas, perhaps we should be a bit harsher about restricting projects on that page to ones like the four you mention, where it may be that mentorship outside the regular team would be needed, or mentorship is expected to be a really major problem? This is in addition to the "More Ideas" blurb needing to be at the top of GSoC Ideas. Also if we participate again, different students will be interested, so perhaps we should think carefully about retiring projects solely because they got no applicants this time around (more on whether they are worth including relative to other possibilities at the time).
 * From GSoC Actions list: All Ideas pages to be updated and 'stale' ideas that no one attempted to be reviewed/retired (james volunteers to do first cut).
 * James 08:38, 23 April 2008 (PDT): I'm going to hold off moving things around until much much later, probably until GSoC 2008 is complete. The Google page links here, so it's a first port of call for anyone looking at our (current) projects and how we got there.  Proposals that have mentor issues, Octave, Postfish, Vamp and Nyquist will move to a page of their own, and each of these ideas will have a very clear warning about needing to discuss first.
 * Proposals that are done will move to GSoC 2008 Ideas, with a comment about what actually happened, e.g. that Render-on-demand became Load-on-Demand.
 * I have some fairly radical ideas about how to repopulate the ideas list once these nine are moved elsewhere, but they'll need discussion.
 * Although few people reached the more-ideas page, I think it's good to have it. People who are keen would have, and it allows 'ideas under construction' to have somewhere to live.
 * James: I think the really important decisions will come out of post project discussion. It's too early to decide.  The general rule will be "more of what worked" and "change/improve what didn't".

Past Discussions (Condensed)
(Before start of GSoC 2008 Coding)
 * Gale/James: Improved order/formatting of this page and More GSoC Ideas (for use next year) discussed and agreed:
 * positioned immediately below the Intro template.
 * Then a section called "GSoC Ideas" or "More GSoC Ideas": contains a brief description of the page and Hint template, followed by GSoC Ideas Key template.
 * Use ==(heading)== for all headings, including for the "(More) GSoC Ideas" section.

(Before 2008 Acceptance)


 * Gale/James: Discussed how to rate the relative difficulty of projects. Stars (too suggestive of a grading) and spanner icons rejected in favour of "Easy", "Moderate" or "Hard", with caveats stated in the Ideas Key Template.
 * James: If someone has time we need to look over our shoulder at what information other GSoC projects are putting on their wikis - particularly ones which have the experience of having participated in the past.

Archived display boxes for 2008 student application process
The below appeared when the 2008 student application process was active. We'll need to re-instate the link to summer-of-code email in (say) December 2008. Struck out text will no longer apply if we are approved in 2009.