This makes sense but let me chip in something! Are we skipping one step? Moving from GCI (as student) straight to GSoC co-mentoring seems like a very large step (which is okay for some students). But I think (in general) the concepts behind GSoC and GCI are very different (few listed below);

• GSoC - project specific with pre-skill set (plus 3 months of work on same task)
  • GSoC is a competition only till the selection level and after that it becomes kinda like a job
• GCI - task specific (small bugs to fix within a couple of days)
  • GCI is a competition from beginning to the end.

And I see it as not very connected as during GCI, students are not really working on projects per say. Though on phabricator, a project is a task (TXXXX), but under the hood, it's really different as the tasks for GSoC and that of GCI are of totally different strengths and duration of time to work on.

So in this regards, I propose that we encourage students who have participated in GCI before to participate in GSoC as student before moving as co-mentors. In this case, they would have understood very well how the GSoC model works and would have gotten the skill set required for this particular scenario.

The idea is: GCI student -> GSoC student -> GCI Mentor -> GSoC Mentor -> GCI Mentor / Org Admin -> GSoC Mentor / Org Admin etc

One problem with

GCI student -> GSoC student -> GCI Mentor -> GSoC Mentor -> GCI Mentor / Org Admin -> GSoC Mentor / Org Admin

is that most GCI students have to wait more than a year before they can be a GSoC student. Furthermore, if I understand GSoC correctly, if you're a student, you'll have to be available at least 30 hours a week, for the whole summer. Which, at least for me, is quite hard.

I do completely agree that it is a very big step from GCI student to GSoC co-mentor, but this might be okay if a student is active with a project, even after GCI is ended. (Also, we're talking about being a co-mentor, which means that there will be a more experienced mentor next to them)

Keep in mind though that my opinion is probably a bit skewed since I'm an (ex) GCI Student.

Hey, I see the problem and you're right! Some students even do GCI multiple times, true! I was looking at it more in the direction of "student using the gap time" to strengthen their skills whether per project or not. But yeah, your line of reasoning is correct, didn't see it in that direction. So in that case, GSoC co-mentor then :)

At first I thought that "projects they were competent in" might be hard to track but we have repo data on https://wikimedia.biterg.io thanks to T204221#4829234.

I looked at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code/Administrators and wondered a bit where/when/if we explicitly call for potential GSoC/Outreachy mentors. Maybe @srishakatux could clarify.

In geneal, we did not inform [the most active] GCI students about the existence of GSoC/Outreachy this time. :( I amended T200779#4820150 for next GCI.