On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 3:34 PM, Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I'm sorry, Pine....but no. It's naming and
shaming. If Praveen had
wanted to highlight the frequency of Wikimedians being granted Wikimania
scholarsips, they could have done exactly what Mike Peel did - compare the
relevant lists and highlight the frequency of users receiving one, two or
three grants over the four years for which data is available. That would
have been - and is - a reasonable point of discussion. It turns out that
Praveen's information was incomplete at best, and incorrect at worst.
It's possible that I misread something, but the question that I read in
Praveen's original email was, "Then, what is the advantage of selecting
same persons again and again for scholarship? Isn't it better to let more
different people to share and experience global community?" I don't see how
citing a specific example amounts to naming and shaming. Unless I'm
overlooking something, there was an honest question of whether current
system of selecting awardees should be modified and examples of the
outcomes of the current award system were provided. I think it is risky to
read negatively into others' motives, and at this point I don't see
evidence that would support a view that there was malicious intent in the
examples being provided. The examples may be uncomfortable, but that's a
very long way from being malicious.
That one specific individual has received more than one of them, and
someone is implying that the grantee failed to live up to their undertaken
responsibilities, is not a reasonable way of discussing those points.
I disagree. If there are examples of grantees not fulfilling their
obligations but being awarded subsequent grants, that would be a problem. I
don't want people to be fearful of being attacked for discussing situations
in which they reasonably think that there may be a problem. I think that an
underlying issue may be the lack of transparency in the awards
applications. If there was more transparency then venerability would be
less of a challenge. I realize that this is a complex problem, and
hopefully there can be constructive discussions about how to address it.
I'm going to be honest - aside from the issue of
multiple grant awards,
I'm finding that this year's processes are a bit more clear than in
previous years. The partial grants, which are worth around 850 USD
depending on room rates, are a good idea, and allow the recipients to
select the most suitable means of transportation for them - especially now
that so many more people are avoiding travel through certain geographic
locations.[1]
Sounds good.
It might be possible, given the number of applicants involved, to provide
a bit more statistical information; for example, total applicants, number
who passed Phase 1, number who passed Phase 2 and were ranked, percentage
of total applicants who received a full or partial grant, etc. It *might*
be possible to provide the general information about Global South/Global
North applicant ratio, but there might be a risk of de-anonymising
[unsuccessful] applicants when trying to identify number of applications
and scholarships from each size wiki community. I think the WMF could
probably also identify number of people who were awarded grants but could
not accept them.
In general I would like the process to be more transparent, and that
includes the usernames of all applicants except for those in situations
where there would be a security reason for withholding that information.
The funds being used are donors' funds, and I would like to have as much
public transparency as possible about how that money is used.
Pine