On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 3:34 PM, Risker <risker.wp@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