As a disclaimer: I have been in multiple roles, including receiving a WMF scholarship (2014, 2017 and 2018), being denied a WMF scholarship, attending Wikimania at my own expense and reviewing Wikimania scholarship applications for a chapter.

From this experience I do not agree with the 'law of diminishing returns' or draconian measures. However, there are several trends:

1) First Wikimania is usually extremely motivating for almost everyone. Yet it is hard for a first-time Wikimania attendee to clearly explain the value of Wikimania for them before attending it. On one hand, these people are very likely to become more involved, start new projects, share new ideas etc. On the other hand, their scholarship applications will be most likely somewhat vague on their plans for Wikimania, and we have to take that into account.

2) Second and following Wikimanias are indeed less likely to bring that much additional motivation. However, there is huge added value as these attendees already know what to expect from and what to look for at Wikimania and in some ways make Wikimania itself more valuable. This includes sharing at Wikimania: participating at round tables, making presentations or posters etc. This also includes learning from Wikimania: asking the questions their community wants to ask, meeting the people who work on the topics they are interested in etc. This is not a diminishing return, but this requires to think of the added value you can bring to Wikimania.

3) For veteran Wikimedians attending a lot of times, Wikimania is also a place to meet people with whom they work online and share experience both ways. For example, we know people want to meet stewards to learn more about their work, and stewards want to meet users to get some insight on their role. This might be a sufficient motivation to attend at own expense if costs are not too prohibitive, but if this is the case (I don't think we have stewards in Sub-Saharan Africa for example) some of them will probably need scholarships. They will bring added value by their experience and role even if they might have attended in previous years.

I don't think there is a simple solution but this definitely deserves a discussion either here or during the conference.

Best regards,

Mykola (NickK)

cs, 30/05/2018 10:16:
> Is there any  other way  of investigating  these issues /without/ 
> mentioning  the names of the scholarship awardees?

Well, in theory we've been publishing the names of people who got a 
scholarship for a few years now, so it should be possible to make a 
complete list of repeat recipients in N years and then talk just about 
the number rather than names.

I agree that repeat scholarships are a bad way to spend donor money, for 
the law of diminishing returns. We can disagree on how big the problem 
is, but we have sufficient evidence that it exists. In the past I've 
proposed and implemented severe penalties, but I'll clearly admit that I 
failed to effectively reform the review process.

I personally agree with more draconian solutions which would set very 
clear expectations. A total ban on a scholarship for those who got one 
the previous year is a possibility. It would be as fair as re-election 
limits in democratic competitions.

Federico

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