On Aug 18, 2011, at 2:43 AM, "Federico Leva (Nemo)" <nemowiki@gmail.com> wrote:

> The big advantage of fixed sums is that you don't have to bother about
> people choosing the cheapest/most sensible flight, accommodation and so
> on, which is almost impossible to do; but then you have to choose a
> sensible amount making some calculations before.
> The requirement to do so is having serious statistics on the costs faced
> by the attendees; this implies very complex surveys in university
> systems, but should be easier for us, we don't need to be as efficient
> as the Studentenwerk (although I don't get how the linked questionnaire
> can help for the next Wikimania[1]).
> Then you have to decide what share of the estimated cost you want to
> cover: if it's too low the incentive in null (only people who would have
> attended anyway get the scholarship) and the money is wasted, if it's
> too high the effectiveness decreases because you have less recipients
> and because we don't have a way to measure the commitment and results
> (so an unknown amount of money will be wasted).
> So far the amount of partial scholarships has been chosen to be good for
> most attendees to maximize participation, but we could also decide to
> keep the share more or less the same for everyone and give different
> (fixed) amounts to different areas of the world, if we think that
> everyone should have the same incentive no matter the cost. I'm not so
> sure of that: perhaps it's more effective to maximize the participation
> of "locals" and for Wikiania 2012 it's better to give 2-3 (partial)
> scholarships to wikimedians from Mexico (or a far USA state) than 1 to a
> wikimedian from Europe (random examples).
>
> Nemo
>
> [1] And for Wikimania 2011, it would be more interesting to know an
> objective piece of information such as the number of partial scholarship
> recipients who refused it because it wasn't enough.
>
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Here's a thought. In the United States when you apply for a student loan from the government, you put down how much money you'll be able to contribute yourself. They then decide how much to give based on how much you say you can contribute.

Say I was awarded a partial scholarship to Israel. The cost of my flight was $1700, but I would have been able to contribute $300. Then, assuming the most generosity, I would have been awarded $1400.

James Hare

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