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,
hi rex,
On Sat, Mar 12, 2016 at 9:33 PM, Nkansah Rexford <seanmavley(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On 12 Mar 2016 8:58 am, "rupert THURNER"
<rupert.thurner(a)gmail.com> wrote:
second the technology that edit is easy highly
influences contributions.
mobile edit experience is by far not where it should be, for me it is
unusable. given that africa is a mobile connected country it is no wonder
that we have so little contributions.
At the moment, I personally find the mobile editing (both from the native
apps and web app ) to be great. There's not much I would add to the
current
I don't do extensive editing on mobile, and I don't know anyone who makes
extensive editing on mobile. I've always seen the mobile editing to be an
added advantage, and not to replace the conventional desktop editing
experience. On the go, you wanna fix a typo in an article, you wanna add a
paragraph, that's how I see the mobile experience, and not as a
reference/citation editing experience, or not for the advanced editing
stuffs.
your edit statistics shows well what you say here:
https://tools.wmflabs.org/guc/?user=Nkansahrexford. a typo fixed to
test once a year or so. currently i cannot tell you "edit or shut up"
because i am not willing to do more mobile edits than you - and this
needs to change :) i am a software development person, and i know app
or browser editing can be done better, especially for citing
references. without taking up screen estate. given my zero
contribution to wikimedia software i am not allowed to criticize too
much. i only hope asaf is reading us and gets it prioritized higher at
WMF *wink wink*
rupert
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