Since Anirudh brought it up: there were far more people who applied who *are* very dedicated long-term contributors *and* who couldn't afford the trip *and* who we would love to bring to Wikimania (in some cases, even people who wanted to present talks of some sort) than we could fund. "Merit," as Austin was using the term, means a combination of all of these factors.
Not to mention hundreds (literally) of applications from people who were not contributors, but are simply hoping for a scholarship (and in those cases, I'm sure you'll agree, placing people who are Wikimedians ahead of them, based on their contributions to the project, is fair).
Come on. Show a little good faith towards Austin and Cary, both of whom have been working really hard to get this done.
And to make scholarships better in the future, all we really need is more money. So fundraising ideas and/or ideas for donors are welcome. The scholarship fund does not come out of thin air.
-- phoebe
On Sun, Jun 8, 2008 at 9:05 AM, Anirudh Bhati anirudhsbh@gmail.com wrote:
Apologies for the rushed response.
I was referring to Austin's comment : "the simple fact is that we have an extremely limited budget, and we chose the people we thought were the best candidates based on the information available to us."
I don't believe merit was or should have been an issue here. A large number of us have been long-term contributors to the Wikimedia projects, and to put one against the other would be great injustice. I am sure we cannot use an objective scale to measure performance.
Instead, there should have been a clear distinction made between those who could have afforded it, and those who can't (I am referring to PCI, PPP and HDI differences)
Apologies for being crude, once again.
Best wishes,
--Anirudh Bhati
On Sun, Jun 8, 2008 at 9:15 PM, Anirudh Bhati anirudhsbh@gmail.com wrote:
I can't believe what you just said above.
But I guess, I am just pissed.
--Anirudh Bhati
On Sun, Jun 8, 2008 at 2:43 AM, Austin Hair adhair@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Jun 7, 2008 at 12:45 PM, José Alberto Conrado Flores fi.mcwan@gmail.com wrote:
PS.- If a scholarship ommittee member has a little spare time, could
they
mind telling us (particularly or generally) the reason that we were not chosen? Thank you.
Unfortunately, with the hundreds of applications we received, we're not able to reply individually to those who didn't receive assistance. This isn't to say that your applications weren't good, or what you weren't deserving—the simple fact is that we have an extremely limited budget, and we chose the people we thought were the best candidates based on the information available to us.
If you weren't sponsored, it isn't that we looked at your application and ruled you out, but rather that we weren't able to accommodate you in our budget. It's very, very difficult to weigh one person's value over another's, and there are a great many candidates I wish we could have helped, but that was the difficult task with which we were charged, and we did our best.
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