Hi all,

I have listened and learned from the comments of y'all. I have been around a while to know that these scholarships seem to be going to the same or close to the same people each year.

Judging Africans with a pool of other seasoned editors who have been in this game for nearly a decade is not even a fair ground to start with. How do you expect similar exploits? It's only obvious one has already gotten ahead of the other, therefore putting say applicants in a pool and sometimes selecting based on their default language of edit is awful. I have noticed most of the Africans who usually get the scholarship have a different default language of edit (not English), I may be wrong :-)

I think it's just reasonable enough for any institution or person ready to extend their exploits to a virgin or novice land, to make adequate commitment or extend sufficient resources to set the cause. Practically your constant involvement with this new place should spark up interests and further commitments from your audience.

It may or may not be reasonable to give 20% of the total number of Africans who applied a scholarship, but it certainly doesn't make sense if the same kinda people (not only from Africa) get selected to attend Wikimania each year. It defeats one of the main purposes of Wikimania, which I think makes you feel like a part of a bigger body, stirs motivation in participants and inspires others who hope to one day gain the opportunity. Not just sitting somewhere determining what percentage of Africans should be selected. In fact not considering if there are new applicants who deserve a place rather than most likely selecting the same people each year.

I find it funny to have applied since I joined and never had a chance, yet others get the chance to go year on year. In actual sense those who have gone a previous year and wish to go the following year, should be made to give very tangible or compelling enough reason or better, be instrumental for the conference. Other than that, other promising or up and coming should be given a chance. It's sad the way this is going and am very sad people have lost faith in the selection process, cos I know someone from Ghana whom I think really deserved it this year. He killed it in terms of new edits, community involvement etc. It's rather unfortunate.

Cheers,