Open contraexemplo opened 3 months ago
Upon further inspection of other email templates related to feedback instructions and reminders, I realized all of our templates have issues with inconsistent wording and terminology:
initial-feedback-instructions.txt
still refers to Feedback 1 as "initial feedback". The subject line of initial-feedback-reminder.txt
talks more explicitly about delays in the initial payment: "Mentor feedback required for initial payment to [public name]".feedback3-feedback-reminder.txt
doesn't include a warning about payment delays on the subject or actual message. feedback3-feedback-instructions.txt
doesn't mention that either even though this feedback cycle is tied to a payment authorization.midpoint-feedback-reminder.txt
still referred to Feedback 2 as "mid-point feedback".Sage and I agree that changing that terminology across our codebase will take a huge refactor. Here are the more pressing issues for now:
Our Internship Guide refers to the stipends as "$3000 stipend" and "$4000 stipend". My proposed solution is to use "Mentor feedback [1 or 3] required for stipend payment to [Public name]" on the subject line and use ${{ current_round.initialpayment }}
and ${{ current_round.finalpayment }}
on the actual message.
If you're interested in the bigger context around this issue, I published a longer, more detailed report about it on my blog.
Context
Outreachy used to collect feedback from mentors and interns 3 times during the internship until a couple of cohorts ago:
With the introduction of a fourth feedback cycle, we started referring to feedback cycles as Feedback 1-4 and we've established that only Feedback 1 and Feedback 3 are tied to stipend payment authorizations.
Issue at hand
Outreachy organizers often send automated emails to mentors and coordinators via organizer dashboard. Currently, when an Outreachy organizer sends an automated email to remind mentors to submit Feedback 4, they're sending an email based on the following template (
home/templates/home/email/final-feedback-reminder.txt
):Causes
We have 4 email template files on
home/templates/home/email
referencing Feedback 4:home/templates/home/email/final-feedback-instructions.txt
→ Updated 2 years ago to remove wording about an intern's final stipend payment.home/templates/home/email/final-feedback-reminder.txt
→ Updated 5 years ago, and it still includes wording about an intern's final stipend payment.home/templates/home/email/feedback4-feedback-instructions.txt
→ Created to reflect our new feedback cycles.home/templates/home/email/feedback4-feedback-reminder.txt
→ Created to reflect our new feedback cycles.The organizer dashboard is still using
home/templates/home/email/final-feedback-reminder.txt
as a template to remind mentors to submit Feedback 4, according todashboard.py
:Code in
email.py
makes it clear why that happens:Possible solutions
Short term
Editing
home/templates/home/email/final-feedback-reminder.txt
. It should use the same language used onhome/templates/home/email/feedback4-feedback-reminder.txt
.Long term
While trying to find the cause of this problem, I noticed that language around feedback cycles is quite convoluted. We often use old expressions such as "initial", "midpoint", and "final feedback". We need to reach an agreement on what terminology should be used, and update our code, website, and processes accordingly.