Google Highly Open Participation Contest (GHOP)

Hi Everyone

Students: Please read this message, even if you have already submitted your prize claim form. You may still need to do one more thing to get your prizes.

1. If you have not already claimed your prize, you are in luck. Google has extended the deadline by one week. You now must submit your prize claim form by Friday, 29 February at 8:00 UTC. You can find all instructions for submitting your prize claim
   form here:
   http://tinyurl.com/3bwl4k

I'd just like to give a warm welcome to everyone involved with DROP- students, mentors, and admins alike! For those of you that don't know, DROP is a successor to the just-closed GHOP program- we want all that learning and contributing to continue all year. So, head on over to the DROP site, sign up for a task, or create one yourself. Let us know how we can help you!

Now that the contest is over, and all the winners have been announced*, I wanted to take a moment to thank the administrators, mentors, task-suggestors, and everyone else who kept this running smoothly over the past few months.

As one of the students, I can't say how great it felt to know that, not only was I helping a project which I am using on a regular basis, but that there were people out there who genuinely wanted to help me get stuff done on Drupal, and were willing to work with me as I made a complete fool out of myself. :)

Thanks a lot guys, you rock!

Dan

Hey everyone

If you haven't done so already, please go to http://groups.google.com/group/ghop-announce/browse_thread/thread/5c541b... for information on how to claim your prizes. You'll need to fill out a form with your mailing address and the list of tasks you completed and send that to Google. You should have already sent in your parental consent form. If not, information on how to do that is at http://groups.google.com/group/ghop-announce/browse_thread/thread/e5dd79....

Let us know if you have any questions.

Some of you may have seen Kieran Lal's pitch to the Drupal community to help get Derek Wright (dww) and Chad Phillips (hunmonk) to DrupalCon Boston to work on the crucial Project* modules, and many of you chipped in to help Derek and Chad reach their goals. But the project* team can still use your help!

Adam Light (aclight on Drupal.org) is also trying to get to DrupalCon to work on Project*, and trust me, it will be worth ten times whatever you can give. I have only had limited interactions with Adam, who I don't know personally, but even those limited interactions have blown my socks off. Adam was a tireless volunteer for the GHOP program, and his work with these students was truly out of this world (take a look at any of the GHOP issues that Adam helped out with and you'll see what I'm referring to). As Webchick noted on her blog post asking for help for Adam and Jimmy "boombatower" Berry: "Adam was the one primarily carrying the torch during the latter half of the GHOP program, and was critical to ensuring its success."

I happened upon a blog post Adam wrote in which he requested assistance on the DrupalCon Boston feed, and I think that Adam is a bit too modest to post his request here, so that's why I'm writing this. Here's how Adam describes his contributions to Drupal:

Recently, a GHOP student asked me for some help in dealing with usability issues in drupal contrib and wanted to know about resources for learning usability. Here I've published my response for others' benefit too:

===============================
Hi,

I consider myself a usability student. I'm definitely not a usability expert -- although I have a strong interest in it and I pursue that interest aside from my paid work, mostly through drupal. Anyway, here are my thoughts;

Like many things in life, I think usability is one of those things many people just 'get' naturally. I call this 'usability sense'. It's also possible to 'learn' usability and improve usability sense, knowledge and understanding through practice, literature and other resources.

In this way 'learning usability' is a lot like learning to play music. Many people 'get' music straight away. They learn the tools (their musical instruments) and then they're away.

Below is a draft of the front-page final status report on GHOP. Feedback is appreciated. :)
---------

Note: This post assumes that you are aware of the Google Highly Open Participation Contest. If not, see that link, or listen to the latest Lullabot podcast about GHOP.

Since our last status report on January 2, 2008:

• An additional 12 students have taken on tasks from the Drupal project, bringing our total to 54 student participants.
• 11 new students have completed one or more tasks, bringing our total to 49, which means that Drupal has just gained that many AWESOME contributors! Of that number, approximately 65% are brand new contributors who came to the Drupal project because of this contest.
• There have been a total of 136 tasks completed so far, which is more than double the last report, which marked us at 67 completed tasks. This means that 69 new tasks to benefit the community have been done in just the last month. The leaders in terms of raw task numbers are boombatower (12) and Corsix (15), with cwgordon7 (9), kourge (9) and ezyang (10) coming up behind. As their high drupal.org user ids indicate, all of these top students except kourge and cwgordon7 were brought to Drupal from the GHOP program— and they are planning on remaining long-term contributors to the Drupal community.
• Thanks to everyone for all of the community support we've received on this project! Your help made it possible for these students to experience the power of an awesome open source community, and gave the community a big boost in the number of contributors.

This is it, GHOP is over! However, judging from it's success, we feel confident that this program will be repeated again next year. There will also be a session on GHOP at Drupalcon if you're interested in learning more about the program and what has been achieved in the past two months.

Read on for a description of the tasks that have been completed since the last status update.

For the past two months, I have been acting as one of the administrators of the Drupal side of the Google Highly Open Participation program (GHOP for short). Briefly, this is a contest that is sponsored by Google in which secondary students (ages 13-18) can claim and complete short one week tasks created by the Drupal community for cash prizes. One of the requirements of the program is that everyone has to use the Google Code task/issue tracker for tracking the "official" progress of the students throughout their tasks. As I have been pretty involved with development of our own issue tracker (the Project issue tracking module used on drupal.org), I thought it would be useful to provide a comparison of the features of these two different systems and make some suggestions of how we can improve the Project issue tracking module to make it even better than it already is.

I'll start by giving an introduction to the main issue tracking features of both the Project issue tracking module and the Google code tracker. I'll also give a description of the administrative user interface from an individual project owner/maintainer's perspective. Next, I'll provide a feature comparison and point out the pros and cons of both systems. Finally, I'll provide some recommendations on specific areas where we can add or improve the Project issue tracking module to make it better than it already is. I want to point out that I am not mentioning any of the features of either tracker that allow it to interface with code, releases, or repositories since we did not use any such features for the GHOP program and thus I would not be able to make a fair comparison.

Students:

I'm passing along a message from Leslie Hawthorn, the director of GHOP at Google. She has asked us to make sure that all of our students get this and know to subscribe to the ghop-announce mailing list so you will know how to claim your prizes.

Posted below is that plan as a wiki page. Everyone, feel free to edit it; just don't start a flame war ;) .

===

Ok, it sounds like people think this is generally a good idea. Here is a rough draft of how it's going to work. Nothing here is set in stone: I'll let everyone else argue over the specifics ;) .

I recently compiled a report, http://drupal.org/node/200054, on three click heat map frameworks and how they related to Drupal. In the report I suggested that ClickHeat he be integrated into Drupal.

The issue suggested that I explain how to setup a server to collect data using the click heat map. To do so few changes would have to be made to the base Drupal installation.

I have created a series of four usability testing tasks in the GHOP programme. Each one tests a different area of Drupal:

• Installation (Claimed)
• Admin (Claimed)
• Node add and edit (Open)
• Anonymous Browsing (Open)

Although it's very depressing and sadful, GHOP is drawing to a close. The question remains: what do we do now? We have many tasks that still need doing, yet we haven't had time to get to. We also have many, many, many awesome new contributors to Drupal, with nowhere to go. Let's avoid the two obvious paths of failure: for the tasks to be abandoned or the students to leave Drupal, never to come back again.

My name is Matthew Pare and I'm a Co-Chair for the "Community and Core" track for Drupalcon Boston 2008. Over the last couple of weeks we have been planning and brainstorming to make Drupalcon Boston 2008 the best Drupalcon to date! One of our recommended track session topics is "GHOP in the Community" and since your viewing this post on the "GHOP" groups.drupal.org group I thought you would be excellent candidates for submitting sessions on the topic.

Hi,
I need a table for #127, so it will go here :)
This table is now fully complete :)

<

table>

Index with 30 nodes No 3.64 55.13 3.42

normal 136.62

As you've no doubt heard, Drupalcon Boston 2008 is on the way March 3 - 6, 2008. I've been contacted by the folks organizing the Community and Core track, and they're very interested in a session at Drupalcon about GHOP. :)

I figure we can have an agenda something like:

• What the heck is GHOP?
• What were the final outcomes of the contest? (statistics)
• GHOP students in attendance get up and show off their cool work
• Show off some other cool work done by students who couldn't attend
• GHOP students and administrators talk a bit about their experiences, what worked/didn't work, and how to continue the "GHOP spirit" post-GHOP.
• Q/A

So...

1. Are you a GHOP student (or admin) planning on attending? If so, leave a comment!
2. Does that agenda sound ok? Too boring? Missing stuff? What do you think?

Let's try and get a proposal together by next Friday, so I can get it into the folks.

Coming

• add1sun (GHOP admin)
• Bevan (GHOP mentor - usability tasks)
• birdmanx35 (GHOP student)
• chx (GHOP mentor - simpletest/benchmarking tasks, plus everything else ;))
• cwgordon7 (GHOP student)
• dmitrig01 (GHOP mentor/general helper-outer/awesome person :))
• EclipseGc (GHOP mentor - theming/UI tasks)
• webchick (GHOP admin)

Not sure

• aclight (GHOP admin)
• boombatower (GHOP student)

Not coming :(
* Corni (GHOP student)
* Corsix (GHOP student)
* kourge (GHOP student)

This page is for tracking the findings of GHOP #136 in coder_format of the coder module.

Hello everyone

With GHOP 2007 getting close to the end, I want to remind the participating students of a few important points. If you're not a student, you don't need to read any further.

If you don't know what this is all about, check out the page on GHOP.

I've created a new tableless, CSS-based XHTML theme. It's a three-column, fluid layout, pictured to your right. No, it won't disappear into white like pictured, but it's still a good theme (in my opinion). If this seems exciting to you, read on...

The TinyMCE Defaults module: set up TinyMCE, along with secure input formats, with a mouse click.

Please give feedback on the issue: http://drupal.org/node/202062

@addisun/webchick/other GHOP admins: should I copy the task description over to the GHOP issue queue at http://code.google.com/p/google-highly-open-participation-drupal/issues/... ?

I have been partially responsible for some abandon-ware in the viewfield.module that would be useful for others if it were integrated back into viewfield, or created as a new project. I'm not sure if it's too much or appropriate as a GHOP task. Can I please have some feedback? http://drupal.org/node/169692#comment-662613

I am especially interested in whether or not this should just jump to Drupal 6 support. I'm not up on whether Views2 is far enough along for a GHOP project.

Summary: Port an old patch meant for Drupal 4.7 to Drupal 5 so Atom module could support views (http://drupal.org/node/70596).

So anyone on the administration team knows that one of the most really un-fun things is going to each issue that's marked "Claimed", looking at the date the task was claimed, looking at the estimated time laid out, pulling out their abacus and fiddling with it for awhile, and coming up with whether or not they need to set the task as "ActionNeeded" or not. Also, going through all the "ActionNeeded" tasks and marking them as "Open" if it's been > 24 hours. Tons of fun, let me assure you.

So let's knock that off, with two new tricks!

1. Henceforth, all task timelines will be one week, unless other arrangements are made. This will allow for things like weekends, exams, or us dragging our feet reviewing things. Also, math is hard. Looking at a calendar is easy. ;)
2. When marking a task as "Claimed", give it a label like DueDate-2007-12-14. This will then show up as a nifty, sortable field in our issue tracker, so we can instantly see what tasks are overdue and need their statuses changed. Kudos to Moodle for this tip!

• We are now allowed up to 200 tasks, rather than the previous 102.
• We are also allowed longer task frames than 5 days if we so choose. But bear in mind that tasks are tied up for the duration of their estimated time, so if we block off a task for 4 weeks and the student doesn't follow through, that effectively removes it from the contest. Shorter deadlines seem to be best, both for us and the students.
• Google's approved the use of "Study problem X and define five tasks that could be done to fix

GHOP is an amazing program that has already yielded some fantastic results. However, in order to continue the success of this program until the finish line (Feb. 4), we need your help!

There are three ways to help with the administration of the GHOP program:

1. Review students' work
2. Propose (and review) new tasks
3. Assist in follow up

Please note that students eligible for the GHOP contest are not allowed to propose tasks and such.

Read on to find out more...

To folks helping out with the administration of this program, please keep your eye on http://drupal.org/project/issues/?text=GHOP&states=8. Ideally, we want this to always be at 0 issues.

We have a couple students whose tasks are probably done, but they are being held up by lack of review. This is bad for the students, and bad for us, too, because students can't take on new tasks until their existing ones are marked "Closed." (aka "Done")

Thanks a lot!

The first week of this contest was a bit hectic, because two of the primary organizers were on business trips, and we were starting to get used to the tools available to us. This weekend, a few of us did some brainstorming about how to better streamline things and get the community involved more.

aclight came up with the following solution:

I've created a read-only announcement list with all of the various issue updates so that more than just myself and Addi can get emails on them. So if you'd like to get notifications on these so you can help with administrative things like changing issue statuses (marking tasks as "Claimed" or "NeedsReview"), or answering student questions that are posted to issues, please subscribe to the group.

http://groups.google.com/group/drupal-ghop-2007

Please see http://groups.drupal.org/node/7360 for guidelines on administering tasks, and feel free to edit that page as things come up.

Solved
very strange , but i commented print_r(array_values($form)); and than it works

so i try to theme 3 different kinds of input forms
all is displayed well, but there is NO save into the DB or no elements are sent by the submit Button

thats my theme
http://drupal.pastebin.com/mb5311a6

the normal form works very well
So what do i have to do that the data is saved

Hi all,

I have claimed the task to make a new brochure for Drupal to be used as a marketing tool at future talks and conferences.

I have already made two mockups which I would like your input on to see if there is any way in which I can improve the brochure, whether the design, layout or content. However, please do bear in mind that the content is editable and that the Marketing team will be able to change any textual content which displeases them with ease by editing the source files, which will be provided once I have completed the task.

I am seeking someone with knowledge of the inner workings of the color.module. This is not a theming question, but rather i need to figure out a way of overriding the names of the regions on the theme config page. Color module ships with 5 regions, Header top, Header bottom etc. I need to find away of changing what these are called. I am thinking that because color.inc gets included by the color.module, I can override in there, but as of yet have failed to do so. Any ideas on this would be appreciated.

Note as of 2007-12-11:
This thread is now closed.

Please post task ideas to the drupal.org GHOP issue queue instead.

Guidelines: How to Propose Tasks

• Tasks need to follow the guidelines/template from of http://code.google.com/p/google-highly-open-participation-drupal/wiki/Ho... and have clear descriptions and deliverables, not be vague ideas like "Well what about something with such and such module?"
• Tasks should be scoped such that they take a 13-18 year old between 2-5 days one week to finish.
• Tasks can be about pretty much anything: coding, documentation, user experience, translation, etc. Just bear in mind that we only have 102 200 of these, so we should aim for high-impact tasks that will help the project as a whole (and also look good on a college application :)).
• Students eligible for the contest are not allowed to propose tasks (sorry!) ARE allowed to post tasks, but can't claim tasks that they propose.
• Before you actually create a task on Google's task tracker, please read our directions on how to propose (and review) new tasks.
• Head over to #drupal-ghop on irc.freenode.net if you want to discuss ideas in "real time."

There are a few issues in GHOP on usability and a several for user interface. Most of the user interface issues are already claimed, but none of the usability ones have any interest yet. I wonder if they are just newer if kids aren't interested in usability, or if the tasks are too vague.

How can we promote usability in the programme? With youths?