Objectionable selection of students in Debian

[Nitish Dwivedi]

Hey Everyone.
Congratulations to everyone who made it through the selection process.
However, I would raise an objection to the selection of particular student
in my project: *Wizard/GUI helping students/interns apply and get started.*

The Idea that I worked on was to subscribe to mailing lists using
python(requests) module. I started to work on this part on 10 Feb 18 and
sent first mail to the mentor, Daniel Pocock on 13th Feb 18 on his personal
email. This was my first commit.
After Mr. Daniel Pocock told me to put my application on the mailing lists,
I Introduced my application on the mailing list[1
]
on 21st Feb 18 along with the code(which I made public ).

However, Another student Minkush Jain[2
]
didn't even introduced himself on the mailing list nor have a wiki page and
got selected in the same project by working on the same idea on which I
worked about 1 month ago.

Also, the amount of similarity in my code and his is amazing. Adding
something on top of something that was already available won't make much of
a different code. The functionality achieved by both the codes was nearly
same.
For Reference, see this code of his: [3
]
& [4

]
I see a lot of similarities from my subscribe mailing list function[5

].

If mentors thought that there is something lagging in my code, they could
have told me about that. I have been waiting for more than a month for a
single suggestion but received none!

Now at the end of all this, I feel cheated and really disappointed by the
selection procedure. I had put a lot of efforts to make this work as this
was my last chance to be part of GSoC. I was surprised how this could
happen even after the enormous amount of work that mentors put here.
This was unexpected!

Thank you
Nitish Kumar Dwivedi

[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-outreach/2018/02/msg00083.html

[2] https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/projects/#4644695314006016

[3] https://github.com/minkushjain/gsoc-debian/commit/5b6989
a677e3d18c3a50051d71f1ca55a39657f7

[4] https://github.com/minkushjain/gsoc-debian/commit/328ad8
21ac3f30d50aa9a6efe863dbecae59d05f

[5] https://github.com/nitishkd/get-started/blob/master/
SubscribeMailingList.py

Re: Objectionable selection of students in Debian

[Daniele Nicolodi]

Hello Nitish,

First, your email contains user tracking artifacts from mailtag.io.
Accordingly to their website it seems that you are using some kind of
browser extension that adds that to your emails. I strongly encourage
your to revisit this choice. I find it abhorring and will discard any
other email containing similar things.

It may very well be that your emails have not been seen by the mentors
because of the above mentioned tracking embedded into them. This one
made it past my spam filters only because I received it through a Debian
mailing list. Other spam filters may be much more severe.

Second, I understand your frustration: any form of candidate selection
will leave someone disappointed. However, the accusatory tone of your
email will not motivate the mentors of your project to motivate their
choice or explain their selection criteria, and they do not have to.

Third, you are openly accusing Minkush Jain to have copied your code for
his submission. However, I don't see any relevant similarity in your and
his code, beside what is inevitable in two function of less than ten
lines of code implementing the same functionality.

Best,
Daniele


On 4/23/18 1:01 PM, Nitish Dwivedi wrote:
> Hey Everyone.
> Congratulations to everyone who made it through the selection process.
> However, I would raise an objection to the selection of particular
> student in my project: *Wizard/GUI helping students/interns apply and
> get started.*
> 
> The Idea that I worked on was to subscribe to mailing lists using
> python(requests) module. I started to work on this part on 10 Feb 18 and
> sent first mail to the mentor, Daniel Pocock on 13th Feb 18 on his
> personal email. This was my first commit.
> After Mr. Daniel Pocock told me to put my application on the
> mailing lists, I Introduced my application on the mailing list[1
> ]
> on 21st Feb 18 along with the code(which I made public ).
> 
> However, Another student Minkush Jain[2
> ]
> didn't even introduced himself on the mailing list nor have a wiki page
> and got selected in the same project by working on the same idea on
> which I worked about 1 month ago. 
> 
> Also, the amount of similarity in my code and his is amazing. Adding
> something on top of something that was already available won't make much
> of a different code. The functionality achieved by both the codes was
> nearly same.
> For Reference, see this code of his: [3
> ]
> & [4
> ]
> I see a lot of similarities from my subscribe mailing list function[5
> ].
> 
> If mentors thought that there is something lagging in my code, they
> could have told me about that. I have been waiting for more than a month
> for a single suggestion but received none!
> 
> Now at the end of all this, I feel cheated and really disappointed by
> the selection procedure. I had put a lot of efforts to make this work as
> this was my last chance to be part of GSoC. I was surprised how this
> could happen even after the enormous amount of work that mentors put here.
> This was unexpected!
> 
> Thank you
> Nitish Kumar Dwivedi
> 
> [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-outreach/2018/02/msg00083.html
> 
> [2] https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/projects/#4644695314006016
> 
> [3] 
> https://github.com/minkushjain/gsoc-debian/commit/5b6989a677e3d18c3a50051d71f1ca55a39657f7
>  
> 
> [4] 
> https://github.com/minkushjain/gsoc-debian/commit/328ad821ac3f30d50aa9a6efe863dbecae59d05f
> 

Re: Objectionable selection of students in Debian

[Daniel Pocock]

On 23/04/18 21:01, Nitish Dwivedi wrote:
> Hey Everyone.
> Congratulations to everyone who made it through the selection process.
> However, I would raise an objection to the selection of particular


Hi Nitish (and anybody else who has concerns about selection),

If you want to question something specific like this, please contact the
mentor or the Debian GSoC admin team directly using the email address
outre...@debian.org

It is a private email address and I would recommend you try to discuss
any concerns privately before making public statements about other
students and members of the Debian community.

Please don't reply to or escalate individual issues to Google without
trying to discuss them with mentors and the Debian admins first.

I want to confirm that I did look at your code, I was pleased to note
that you divide your code into functions and also check the return
values of various API calls while many other applicants don't do so.
However, none of the code samples from any student was perfect and the
code samples are not the only things we look at when making a decision.
Amongst other things, we also look at the ideas in the proposal, the
student's engagement with free software communities and a range of other
factors too.

As noted in my earlier email, the selection process is difficult for
mentors.  We usually have many good candidates for a project.  In most
parts of Debian, we do not have to turn people away like this but in
GSoC we have to work within the size and shape of the program.  Please
also remember that mentors and admins do this as volunteers.

Regards,

Daniel

Re: Objectionable selection of students in Debian

[Nitish Dwivedi]

Thanks for the suggestion. I will not use any of the mail tracking
artifacts.
For the rest of the clarification, I will use the private mail
outre...@debian.org.

Regards,
Nitish

On Tue, Apr 24, 2018 at 1:35 AM, Daniel Pocock  wrote:

>
> On 23/04/18 21:01, Nitish Dwivedi wrote:
> > Hey Everyone.
> > Congratulations to everyone who made it through the selection process.
> > However, I would raise an objection to the selection of particular
>
>
> Hi Nitish (and anybody else who has concerns about selection),
>
> If you want to question something specific like this, please contact the
> mentor or the Debian GSoC admin team directly using the email address
> outre...@debian.org
>
> It is a private email address and I would recommend you try to discuss
> any concerns privately before making public statements about other
> students and members of the Debian community.
>
> Please don't reply to or escalate individual issues to Google without
> trying to discuss them with mentors and the Debian admins first.
>
> I want to confirm that I did look at your code, I was pleased to note
> that you divide your code into functions and also check the return
> values of various API calls while many other applicants don't do so.
> However, none of the code samples from any student was perfect and the
> code samples are not the only things we look at when making a decision.
> Amongst other things, we also look at the ideas in the proposal, the
> student's engagement with free software communities and a range of other
> factors too.
>
> As noted in my earlier email, the selection process is difficult for
> mentors.  We usually have many good candidates for a project.  In most
> parts of Debian, we do not have to turn people away like this but in
> GSoC we have to work within the size and shape of the program.  Please
> also remember that mentors and admins do this as volunteers.
>
> Regards,
>
> Daniel
>
>
>

Re: Objectionable selection of students in Debian

[haibolaai]

Re: Objectionable selection of students in Debian

[T K Sourabh]

On Tue, Apr 24, 2018 at 6:38 AM, haibol...@gmail.com
 wrote:
>
> Hi, I am also a applicant for this project..haha.
>  I saw this mails and am very sorry to hear the bad thing of yours. But the 
> result can't be changed.
> I think you are enough good for this project. And your work showed this.
> So you should not feel cheated, and don't turn anger to the mentor(s) and 
> community.
> We konw, sometimes things are not always so satisfactory. And we should 
> respect for the choice of mentor(s) and community.
> Althought I was not chosen, I am also thank for the mentor(s) and other 
> applicants who gave me hands, of course, and GSoC.
> I also learned some interesting things during this time. Maybe this is a 
> interesting thing of the open source world: I come, without leaving a name, 
> but my spirit is there.
> Thanks.


Hi Haibolaai,

Thank you. This is the nicest thing I have read today. Looking at the
good and amazing things amongst all this chaos is very nice.
I wish you all the best for your future endeavours :)

Cheers
T K Sourab