November 09th, 2017, 9:30 PM IST. Outreachy results are announced. And I am happy to be selected as an intern for Outreachy Dec 2107 to Mar 2018. More than the joy, my belief that hard work will payoff is strengthened. During the application period, there was nothing in my mind, but to give everything for the project I loved to do. It is a Mediawiki project for automatically detecting spambot registration using machine learning like invisible reCAPTCHA. I was always intrigued by the concept of captchas, but never took the time to know more about them. Everytime Google came with a new captcha I would wonder what was wrong with the old one. For the project proposal, I did an extensive research about various captchas. Learning more about captchas made me even more curious.
I have heard and read about people discussing about open source projects, but I never knew what to do or how to begin. Outreachy provides a good platform where you can place your first steps to enter this new world. The mentors and others in the project are patient enough and very supportive to clear the doubts you post in the forums. Earlier, I used to read about contributing to open source projects, but I never had the courage to really do anything. The tasks provided by mediawiki for the interested applicants were systematic and organized. Completing one task and moving to the next gave me immense joy. Instead of worrying about the whole project and my ability to work on it, focussing on one task at a time made things easier.
Now it is the community bonding period. I am very excited to meet the people behind these projects. I am a bit anxious too 🙂 . Again, my belief that taking small steps each day will make it all work in the end… Wishing myself all the best 😀
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