gsoc26: students guideline outdated

[felixhekhorn]

I think the page with the student guidelines https://github.com/HSF/hsf.github.io/blob/main/gsoc/students-guideline.md is outdated; e.g. this 2024 here is suspicious:

hsf.github.io/gsoc/students-guideline.md

Line 15 in b58cc3a

1. Take a look at the list of participating [projects]({{ site.baseurl }}/activities/gsoc.html#projects-in-2024) this year. If there are no projects or just a few, note that more will be added according to this year's [timeline]({{ site.baseurl }}/activities/gsoc.html#timeline).

also the dates look wrong ...

If this page is year-specific, as it seems to be, it should better move under the relevant year folder

[sm-28601]

Hi @felixhekhorn,

Thanks for pointing this out.

I’d be happy to help update this.
Would you prefer:

1. Making the guidelines year-agnostic (removing hardcoded years and updating links), or
2. Moving the page under the relevant year folder (e.g. gsoc/2026/)?

Please let me know your preference and I can prepare a PR.

Thanks!

[wdconinc]

I think making the page 'timeless' (removing exact dates and years) is likely best.

The guidelines are generally still correct, and duplicating this from year to year is not that useful.

For the deadlines, maybe we can do something like: "Feb 21" -> "in the third week of February", with a disclaimer that the dates are indicative and the actual dates for each year are in the GSoC page. The reason to have some general range for the dates is that GSoC only lists the dates in January and we start getting inquiries all through the fall.

Some smaller issues can be modified as well though: gitter isn't as much in use anymore and mattermost may be a better recommendation (or leave it out entirely, as individual projects may have specific platforms they prefer).

[sm-28601]

Thanks @wdconinc for the clarification! I'll start working on a PR