Replace "students" with "participants" in current GSoC pages

[Copilot]

GSoC now accepts open source beginners regardless of student status. Current pages consistently used "student(s)" where "participant(s)" is the appropriate term.

Changes

_activities/gsoc.md (main 2026 page)

• Section heading: For Students → For Participants
• Intro sentence updated to "open source beginners"
• All timeline entries, blog list links, and inline references updated

gsoc/students-guideline.md

• Title and heading updated; filename preserved for backward compatibility (historical pages link to students-guideline.html)

gsoc/2026/blogs.md

• Page title: HSF student pages for GSoC 2026 → HSF participant pages for GSoC 2026

gsoc/guideline.md (mentor instructions)

• student evaluation → participant evaluation
• your student will effectively work → your participant will effectively work

Not changed (per instructions)

Historical pages (2025 and older) left as-is.

Current 2026 proposals that still use "students" — flagged for follow-up:

• _gsocproposals/2026/proposal_ATLAS_TILESIGNAL.md
• _gsocproposals/2026/proposal_BioDynamo_CartopiaX.md
• _gsocproposals/2026/proposal_BioDynamo_LargeScaleAntimatter.md
• _gsocproposals/2026/proposal_CMS_CompOpsArchi.md
• _gsocproposals/2026/proposal_Clad-GPU.md

Original prompt

---

This section details on the original issue you should resolve

<issue_title>GSoC pages refer to "students" instead of "participants"</issue_title>
<issue_description>The GSoC program accepts "open source beginner" participants regardless of student status. Our pages still refer to "students" in the context of the GSoC program. We should replace this with "participants" throughout.</issue_description>

<agent_instructions>Focus on changes to the current pages. There is no need to modify the historical pages. Don't change any current or past project proposals that may refer to students instead of participants, but add a checkbox list of current project proposals that use students for followup.</agent_instructions>

Comments on the Issue (you are @copilot in this section)

• Fixes GSoC pages refer to "students" instead of "participants" #1869

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[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR updates GSoC-related terminology from "student(s)" to "participant(s)" across current (2026) pages to reflect that the GSoC program now accepts open source beginners regardless of student status. Historical pages (2025 and earlier) are intentionally preserved with original terminology.

Changes:

• Updated all references from "student(s)" to "participant(s)" in 2026 GSoC pages
• Changed section headings, timeline entries, and narrative text to use inclusive "participant" terminology
• Preserved filename students-guideline.md for backward compatibility with historical links

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 4 out of 4 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

File	Description
_activities/gsoc.md	Main 2026 GSoC page - updated introduction, "For Students" section heading, timeline entries, and blog post references to use "participant" terminology
gsoc/students-guideline.md	Participant guidelines - updated title, heading, and all content references while preserving filename for backward compatibility
gsoc/2026/blogs.md	Blog listing page - updated title from "student pages" to "participant pages"
gsoc/guideline.md	Mentor instructions - updated references to participant evaluation and participant work expectations

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