Hello,
First of all, I want to congratulate and thank the Wikimania organizing team
for putting together one of the best-organized Wikimanias I've attended. It's
easy to only notice the problems, so I wanted to call out the great work
explicitly.
My main disappointment this year is that many sessions seem to go unrecorded.
In previous years, I seem to recall that videos for most sessions were
recorded, and sometimes even streamed live. It sometimes took months for the
videos to be processed and uploaded to Commons or other video hosting sites,
but the videos existed. If the session isn't taped at all, then the record is
lost forever.
We have a lot of talented presenters giving insightful talks and generating
great discussions, but only for the benefit of the small subset of our
community that's present in the room. If we can't share what happens at
Wikimania with our larger community, it seems like a missed opportunity for
our movement. Even for Wikimania attendees, when there are up to 8
simultaneous tracks, it's easy to miss sessions you're interested in.
I realize it's probably too late to do anything for this year's Wikimania, but
I'd like to start a discussion about making video recordings of all sessions
(not just a selection of them) a requirement for upcoming Wikimania bids.
--
Guillaume Paumier
Hi,
[ Since my question was repeatedly handled as my desperation of inability
to achieve the scholarship, I had to wait until Wikimania finished. :-) And
also this is not about someone going to Wikimanias again and again, it is
about granting Wikimania scholarships to same persons again and again]
I hope I could ask some questions directly:
* Why scholarship committee selecting same persons again and again for
years?
* What are the advantages to local community / Wikimedia of having a
"permanent" Wikimania scholarship holder?
* Why no regular Wikimedian get any scholarship, eventhough a developer's
wife got scholarships in multiple years even without any kind of
significant contributions?
* Is this scholarship committee solely depend on the "selling point"
provided by the applicant?
* Even now none of the Wikimanians shared anything with our community about
Wikimania, we even didn't see them anywhere near wikis. Did they attend the
Wikimania? How could we get their contributions to the Mania?
A slightly elaborated conversation is attached below (direction: bottom to
top), I got no clarity even after that. Please help.
Thanks and Regards,
Praveen P
User:Praveenp (ml.wp, commons, translatewiki)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com>
Date: 4 May 2015 at 11:17
Subject: Re: Wikimania Scholarship
To: praveenp <me.praveen(a)gmail.com>
Hoi,
I know the WMF, it does not pull pranks like that to the best of my
knowledge. I would not even be surprised that there is a ticket for the
exact issue that you highlighted. (I am not looking for one, I have
interest). My point is again, it is NOT about having great language skills,
it is not about how often someone went. It is about how much of a
difference you may make at the conference. Preparing a speech is the way I
have done it and so can you.
Thanks,
GerardM
On 4 May 2015 at 07:16, praveenp <me.praveen(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> My point is not about someone going to Wikimanias again and again, it is
> about *Wikimania scholarships are granted to same persons again and again*.
> According to your argument persons with better language skill would be
> granted scholarship, and there is nothing wrong with it. IMO that is
> against Wikimedia philosophy and ethics. A scholarship committee is for
> assessing applicants through various ways. If they solely depend the
> "selling" point given by the applicant, there shouldn't be this scholarship
> committee :-).
>
> Consider this private post by me (I've added you), which is about a server
> error in application[1]:
> https://plus.google.com/+praveenp/posts/XtB1b9fmqcZ
> This roughly translates as, "I tried to apply Wikimania Scholarship, even
> server told me - F*** you". It was 19 January, and I was pretty sure that I
> wouldn't get any scholarship. I saw couple of other similar posts sharing
> same feeling. We are not Nostradamus :-) but we just know. And also it did
> happen just as we expected.
>
> I doubted that whether this should be shared or not (As you've clarified,
> this can easily be marked as inability to achieve scholarship). But on
> second thought, if this happened on ml.wikipedia, this would happened on
> every other projects.
>
> Regards,
> Praveen. P
> User:Praveenp
>
> [1]: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T87182
>
>
> On Sunday 03 May 2015 02:02 PM, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
> Hoi,
> I have been to many Wikimanias myself. At every one of them I gave a
> presentation and I made it a point to have an idea of what it is that I
> achieved while being there. Your point is that the same people have been
> there, that is in and of itself not so relevant. It is what they achieved,
> it is how they networked. When people are known to be good at that, you
> will find that they often return to Wikimania.
>
> This year I do not have the bandwidth to go to Wikimania so I did not
> apply, I did not prepare a presentation even though it is trivially easy
> for me to do so.
>
> When you want to go to Wikimania, make sure that you are clear why you
> want to go, what you intend to achieve and make that obvious. That is why
> you may be selected for a grant. There is no justification in all the good
> work that you do when you cannot or do not express how going to Wikimania
> makes a difference.
>
> You have to sell this idea. There is no point in comparing yourself with
> others. They hope to achieve what they hope to achieve..
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
> On 3 May 2015 at 09:57, praveenp <me.praveen(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> It is hard for me to digest that scholarship committee is selecting same
>> persons again and again for last 6 or 7 years. I just put myself as an
>> example but I am sure there were many others have applied. :-)
>>
>> Regards,
>> Praveen. P
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sunday 03 May 2015 01:16 PM, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>>
>> Hoi,
>> Good to hear from you.. There are no policies except for the ones that
>> you know of as well. Obviously it makes a difference when you are able to
>> sell the reason why you should go to Wikimania. If someone does a better
>> job than you ... what can I say.
>>
>> The most obvious and easy way to get in is to submit proposals for a
>> talk, a workshop or anything else that shows that you want to achieve
>> something..
>> Hope that helps :)
>> Have fun
>> Gerard
>>
>> On 3 May 2015 at 09:38, praveenp <me.praveen(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I don't know whether you are the right person but I truly believe you
>>> may have some ideas to answer my doubt :-) If I remember correctly, I did
>>> apply Wikimania scholarship last couple of years but never got one. :-(
>>> However every year User:Viswaprabha got scholarship even with his minimal
>>> wiki contributions. I know he is a great e-mail generator, but other than
>>> that I really wish to know whether there are any policies which restrict
>>> new people from getting scholarship.
>>>
>>> As you may know I translate Mediawiki, edit Wikipedia articles, file
>>> bugs, translate and contribute to commons, actively participate discussions
>>> (mostly as devils advocate :-) ) etc.. None of it never counts.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Praveen. P
>>> User:Praveenp
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
Were any of the Wikimania keynote addresses (Lila, Luis, Jimmy)
videorecorded? Can't find 'em on Commons or YouTube. Any help or
information is appreciated.
Jonathan
--
Jonathan T. Morgan
Senior Design Researcher
Wikimedia Foundation
User:Jmorgan (WMF) <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jmorgan_(WMF)>
+1 Cornelius.
It is important to keep people in touch and mixing with others outside
their local area to maintain strong ties in the organization.
Many of us lack either funding or scheduling flexibility to attend the
international meetings.
I am certain that I am not the only person who has found the videos of past
Wikimanias valuable!
Different people learn in different ways, and at the end of a long work
day, many of us find listening to a video much easier than attempting to
make sense of printed text.
The videos break down some of the barriers to diversity. When there aren't
enough scholarships available for everyone who wants to attend, the video
is a way to keep people in touch with the organization and their friends,
regardless of their personal economic situation or geographic location.
People give up on waiting for the videos if they are not posted promptly,
and easy to find on the website. You'd get more audience if they were
easier to find.
Kristin
Wikimedia DC
Hi,
Since my photos taken with my phone are automatically uploaded to cloud
storage (OneDrive), is there any tool (on Tool Labs or elsewhere) to
quickly upload those photos from cloud storage to Commons? If not, it may
be a nice tool idea for me to work on. :)
Thanks.
--
Kenrick
kenrick95.org
[image: Kenrick on about.me]
Hi folks,
Just a reminder, the Wikimania '15 group photo will be taken today at Museo
Soumaya lobby at 9 pm.
Thanks,
--
*Iván Martínez*
*Wikimanía 2015 Chief CoordinatorUser:ProtoplasmaKid
@protoplasmakidhttp://wikimania2015.wikimedia.org
<http://wikimania2015.wikimedia.org>*
Hemos creado la más grande colección de conocimiento compartido. Ayuda a
proteger a Wikipedia, dona ahora:
https://donate.wikimedia.org
Hi Friends,
Just wondering if anyone willing to be look around and do more sightseeings
tommorow with me? I´m in Hotel One and I need to check out at 12PM but my
flight only leaves at 8:30 PM.
Please let me know if anyone interested, and also if somebody leaves to the
airport around that time so that we could share the expenses.
Best,
*~Orsolya*