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:
Please note that students eligible for the GHOP contest are not allowed to propose tasks and such.
Read on to find out more...
#1: Review students' work
This is arguably the most important thing you can do to help with this program. If students submit their work, and it takes days for us to get back to them with either a thumbs-up or further suggestions, it's extremely demoralizing and frustrating. Additionally, it holds them up from taking on additional tasks, which means we get fewer helpful patches, documentation, and so on.
To help with this:
- Hang out in #drupal-ghop on irc.freenode.net and provide advice. Students often have questions about how they should approach problems, and we need an army of people ready and willing to help them.
- Keep tabs on tasks that need review. There's a (slightly imperfect) list at: http://drupal.org/project/issues/?text=GHOP&states=8. Ideally, we want this list to be zero, at all times, with tasks either marked "code needs work" (if there's still work to be done) or "ready to be committed/fixed" if they're complete.
- Review students' work thoroughly. For code, test not only that the solution works but also that it conforms to coding standards and security best-practices. For documentation, ensure the message is communicated clearly and has been checked over for spelling/grammar mistakes.
- If you can't review the work, please track down someone who can. For example, you might not know enough about the Foo module to review a patch for it, but if the maintainer of the Foo module is in IRC, ping him/her to look at the task.
- Provide clear instructions for what is left to be done before task is "complete" There's nothing worse than having your task marked "code needs work" and not being sure how to complete a task. Be specific in what it will take for them to have another task under their belt.
- If a task is complete, mark it as such in the Google task ticket. This means changing its status to "Closed." If you don't have permissions, track down anyone listed as a Project Owner/Project Member at our official GHOP project page.
#2: Propose (and review) new tasks
Our students have been absolutely fantastic and are whipping through tasks faster than we can create them. So we need to make sure we have ongoing pipeline of interesting, fun, and challenging tasks available. In particular, tasks around coding, usability, and "recipe"-style documentation have been popular, since they require creativity.
- Propose proper, full tasks, not task ideas. We need tasks written up according to the task guidelines.
- Post an issue to the Drupal.org GHOP project's issue queue with your task write-up (check first if it exists already, here and here). The admins and the rest of the community can then review the task and suggest revisions.
- If not already a member, track down one of the admins to add you as a member to the Google task tracker. People listed at our official GHOP project page as "Project owners" can add additional members, and people listed as "Project members" are able to propose official tasks.
- Once the task proposal is marked 'ready to be committed', create an issue for the task in whatever queue is appropriate. For example, "Drupal" for core-related tasks, "Documentation" for documentation-related tasks, etc. Title it "GHOP #xx: Title of task here" and expand the "Categories" fieldset and give it the "GHOP" tag.
- Also add it to the Google task tracker. Bear in mind that tasks cannot be edited once they are entered here, so make sure to get it right the first time. ;) Give it the Status of "Open", label it according to the type of task ("Code", "Documentation", etc.), and add a "DrupalIssue-###" label as well, which references the corresponding drupal.org issue. Remove all other labels.
- Go back to the drupal.org issue and update the title with the GHOP issue number. Yes, this is kind of a pain in the butt. Sorry, but we've found that people don't follow code.google.com. :(
#3: Assist in follow up
We can only ensure the best results from this program when tasks are managed in a timely fashion. Your goal as a co-administrator is simple: keep tabs on the task queue and change statuses accordingly.
Helping with this entails:
- Follow task updates Either subscribe to or keep tabs on the task list update e-mails at http://groups.google.com/group/drupal-ghop-2007.
- If not already a member, track down one of the admins to add you as a member to the Google task tracker. People listed at our official GHOP project page as "Project owners" can add additional members, and people listed as "Project members" are able to propose official tasks.
- Check for validity of task claims. Please note the following, which is from the contest rules:
- The student must state exactly the phrase: "I claim this Task." Any variations to that line do not count as a claim. At the same time, we've been accepting task claims if there is other text in the comment in addition to "I claim this task".
- The first student to state this exact phrase on the task, provided they are eligible (see below), can be awarded the task. If that student fails to execute on a task, it then goes to the next student to claim it. And so on.
- A student may only work on one task at a time. Tasks aren't considered done until they're marked "Closed". Check the Google issue tracker to ensure the student's name doesn't appear there (you're also technically supposed to check the issue trackers of all the other projects' trackers, too).
- Mark tasks that pass all the above as "Claimed". To do this, change the task's Status to "Claimed" and add a Label "ClaimedBy-student_handle.
- Check for tasks that are nearing deadlines. Each task comes with a timeframe on it (usually between 2 and 5 days). If a student is nearing the end of that, especially if they've not given any status indication on their progress, change its status to "ActionNeeded" and leave a polite note indicating that you need an update from them.
- Move tasks from "ActionNeeded" to "Open" if a student hasn't come by within 24-48 hours of the status change. Note: we do give some leeway if things come up and the student's told us about it.
- Monitor GHOP tasks on drupal.org that need status changes. You can view a (somewhat buggy) list of all GHOP tasks at http://drupal.org/project/issues/?text=GHOP. In particular, check for tasks that aren't properly marked "needs review" so we can get eyes on them.
- Fill in missing details, for example drupal.org issues missing the "GHOP" tag, or google issues missing the DrupalIssue tag, etc.
- Contact people for task ideas and reviews. Unglamorous, but infinitely helpful.