Outreachy report #40: December 2022
This December, I improved our manual feedback review system, our asynchronous communications, and created a proposal for a new feedback interface on our website.
All Outreachy organizers use a shared document where we write notes about feedback we’ve reviewed. Notes used to be written in freeform. Emoji keys were used to symbolize specific issues.
We typically manually manage three queues that require further action:
- The payment queue. This queue has two sub-queues: one that adds interns to the next payment authorization, and another that logs all payment authorizations sent to be executed by Software Freedom Conservancy. It consists of interns who have received successful feedback reviewed by Outreachy organizers.
- The work/life balance queue. This queue keeps a log of interns who should be contacted by Outreachy organizers because they’ve indicated they’re overworking. We share tips to encourage them to not overwork themselves.
- The follow-up queue. This queue has two sub-queues: one that logs cases to be discussed among Outreachy organizers, and one for cases that were already discussed and need a follow up via email, Zulip messages, or virtual meetings.
Feedback isn’t submitted in an ordered fashion: some communities may take longer to submit feedback on their interns, some interns may take longer than their mentors to submit their feedback, and some mentors may submit feedback for one intern but forget to submit for another. Some feedback may also be submitted later than usual due to internship extensions we’ve approved.
The page that displays feedback we’ve received does so in alphabetical order by community. You need to scroll down to every intern section and read the contents to check if:
- Their mentor submitted feedback about them
- Their mentor wants to move on without an extension, with an extension, or wants to terminate the internship
- That intern submitted their feedback
- That intern is overworking
Improved note-keeping and readability of manual notes
Our shared document should be treated as a dynamic document throughout the whole internship. We should use the same shared document to keep notes on feedback for all interns.
The first section of the document keeps track of the current status of feedback submissions and, if applicable, payment authorizations.
Every intern has a section with the following subsections:
- [Concerning]: Things we should bring up on meetings and may require a follow up.
- [Contradicting]: Contradicting statements from mentors and intern.
- [Intern feedback #{$number}] A summary of the intern’s report.
- [Mentor feedback #{$number}]: A summary of the mentor’s report.
Emoji keys are still used to provide an at a glance summary of the intern’s situation. For instance, 🚨💡🌉 means “Urgent situation, intern reports problems related to lack of electricity or internet connectivity, intern needs more support from mentors”.
Using our website to build a dynamic feedback visualization tool
While it’s useful to write down a summary of what we’ve read, manually keeping track of intern and mentor feedback increases the chances of making mistakes. For instance, the intern list we get from a query isn’t necessarily in the same order as they’re displayed on the website. If you aren’t attentive, you could attribute an intern’s feedback to another intern.
Much of what I’ve mentioned in my first proposal can be automated or facilitated by using data we already collected on our website. That would help us focus on what’s important—reviewing feedback in a timely manner.
We would read intern and mentor Feedback on the website and have an interface to mark them as read and reviewed. We would have the ability to make comments, if needed. The interface would display the name of the feedback reviewer and a timestamp associated with their last action.
We could implement filters such as:
- Missing mentor feedback
- Missing intern feedback
- Missing mentor and intern feedback
- Reviewed intern feedback
- Reviewed mentor feedback
- Reviewed intern and mentor feedback
- Paid (available on feedback cycles #1 and #3)
Interns with either reviewed intern and mentor feedback or at least reviewed mentor feedback could be automatically added to a payment authorization queue that generates the necessary documents and list to be sent to Software Freedom Conservancy during feedback cycle #1 and #3.
Filters should display a count so we know how many interns are associated with a specific status. That display count would be shown on the organizer dashboard.
Emoji keys could be associated with review qualities. We would have a section for review qualities where a reviewer could check a checkbox that says “Urgent situation”, another that says “Intern reports problems related to lack of electricity or internet connectivity”, another one that says “Intern needs more support from mentors”, and our website would display the emojis 🚨💡🌉 next to the intern’s name.
Stronger asynchronous communications
It’s quite challenging to keep a stand-up routine in a team with a significant timezone difference. I’ve come to realize that while it gave us an idea of what we plan to work on that particular day, it didn’t fully communicate the progress or status of things we’ve responsible for. That’s why I’ve been creating task-specific topics on our private Zulip stream. Here are two examples:
- “The Twitter Situation”: A topic to keep track of our response to Twitter’s takeover. I’ve been sharing news on Twitter policies, the status of our fediverse presence, and useful tools for our transition.
- “Feedback cycles”: A topic to keep track of the progress of our feedback review sessions. If someone is added to the follow up queue, we add a new message with a summary of the situation and a discussion question. If there’s missing feedback, someone new is added to the payment queue, or an extension is approved, we can send a message updating each other of the current feedback cycle status.