Hi,
transparency on the selection can only work when also the application texts are
public because we have many very active Wikimedians who are not very clear
about what they ever did or actually do, how this is relevant to Wikimania and
if they are able to and want to share this at Wikimania and back in their local
communities afterwards. However, if only the results were published, there
could be no useful discussion between the committee and others without
information from the application texts.
But when applications are public, it would make absolutely no sense to have a
committee for the selection because every decision by the committe could be
easily be debated. When the expertise of the committee is questioned, people
would be hesitant to participate as already described in this thread. Hence,
only a public selection done by the community as a replacement for the
committee would make sense.
When the community would decide on the applications, we had to define who would
be part of that community: who's eligible to vote on these? should the votes be
public? would large discussions be allowed? etc. As we have lots of experience
with public elections, we can also easily name the disadvantages of these:
Popularity contests for only those people who can stand public criticism,
sometimes by few very loud destructive people or even enemy groups, on
everything they every did. Tons of people would be refrain from applying at
all, something we strongy have to face at the moment with elections for
adminship or other committees as pointed out by Risker.
Of course, we had transparency as a result and more public discussions around
the selection, but we would have no safe space for applicants at all (also in
terms of sensitive data like personal living conditions and anonymity). I see
no third working model besides these and my preference would clearly be the
committee. But if you like, you can, of course, seek consensus on the other
model. I will raise my concerns there as pointed out here.
Best,Martin/DerHexer(long-time scholarship committee member and co-organizer)
Von: Jonathan Cardy <[email protected]>
An: Wikimania general list (open subscription)
<[email protected]>
Gesendet: 9:09 Mittwoch, 19.April 2017
Betreff: Re: [Wikimania-l] WMF Scholarships to attend Wikimania
Risker is right.
You can't publish such a table this year because it would break the promises
made to applicants who were declined.
You could start a discussion on meta, and make a proposal to publish such data
for future Wikimanias. I'd hope you wouldn't get consensus, but if you did we
could then monitor the effect on the 2018 Wikimania. If the requirement to
publish details on unsuccessful applicants as well as successful ones was
deterring a significant proportion of applicants, or deterring certain types of
applicants such as applicants from particular countries, then I'd hope 2019
would revert to the obviously superior system of not publicly listing the
people who applied for scholarships but were declined. I do appreciate that in
the future historians studying Wikipedia would really appreciate this data, and
I can see the point of putting it in a sealed archive and publishing after all
concerned have probably died. I'm not sure I see the point in publishing it
now, if people are concerned about fairness then get someone you trust to run
for the scholarship committee.
Regards
WereSpielChequers
On 19 Apr 2017, at 04:14, Risker <[email protected]> wrote:
I would like the Wikimedia Foundation NOT to do that. Our user privacy is to
be respected. People who applied for scholarships had every reason to expect
that the WMF would not publish their names if they were not awarded one, for
example. Nobody who applies is guaranteed a WMF scholarship; however, several
other organizations actively provide scholarships to community members who did
not receive a WMF scholarship. Transparency does not require putting users
into embarrassing or awkward situations, and many users who applied for
scholarships may not have done so if they were told that the names and details
of their application would be published. The scholarship committee is made up
largely of volunteers, and they don't deserve the inevitable brickbats that
would be thrown their way if particularly vocal members of the community
disagreed with their decisions. And it's a given that just about every member
of the community will disagree with one or more decision made by the committee.
So no, please don't publish any details of any application, or how any
individual candidate was assessed. That's not transparency.
Risker/Anne
On 18 April 2017 at 22:51, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja <[email protected]> wrote:
Hello, I would like WMF to make the list of applicants, their contributions,
the weightage used for each kind of contribution and the final list of
scholarship awardees in a table form. Since WMF is run by the contributions of
the volunteers, such a transparency is definitely needed from WMF. I hope WMF
will oblige. Regards,Pavanaja From: Wikimania-l [mailto:wikimania-l-bounces@
lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ellie Young
Sent: 19 April 2017 01:23 AM
To: Wikimania general list (open subscription)
Subject: [Wikimania-l] WMF Scholarships to attend Wikimania Everyone who
applied for a scholarship to Wikimania '17 has been notified about the status.
If you have not heard, please check your spam filter, or send email to ask
about the status to: wikimaniascholarships@ wikimedia.org April 18 is the
deadline for people who were offered a scholarship to respond. A final list of
everyone who was awarded and able to accept will be posted to on the wiki in
early May. We expect registration for Wikimania '17 to go live on or before May
1st. -- Ellie YoungEvents ManagerWikimedia [email protected]
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