I'm sorry, Pine, but I see no way to have a "civil discussion" when the initiator makes it about one single other person. If the originator, after having been redirected, had stuck to general comments instead of continuing to complain about a single user receiving multiple scholarships, I'd have given it a pass.  But the same user's name is mentioned repeatedly (a second user is also mentioned in one of the posts), and it is clear that at least some of the  allegations being made about the user are not true. (The initiator of the thread conceded that after being corrected.)  I am very sorry that you do not see this as bullying.  I am very serious when I say that, because the fact that you and perhaps others aren't seeing this as a form of bullying, specifically naming and shaming, is exactly part of the problem that the Wikimedia communities are trying to address, often with little success.  This entire conversation could have been held without the mention of a single user's name. 

Now, the more important point is whether or not anyone is putting their suggestions for improvement onwiki.  Of course, part of the problem is that it's really unclear where these suggestions should go, or for that matter which wiki it should go on; the rules for this round of scholarships is on the Wikimania wiki, while the list of successful candidates is on Meta.  So...Scholarship Committee, where do you want suggestions to go?  Link to a particular page please. 

Risker/Anne

On 22 May 2017 at 03:26, Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 5:22 PM, Risker <risker.wp@gmail.com> wrote:

On 21 May 2017 at 20:12, Pine W <wiki.pine@gmail.com> wrote:

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.

I think you may have missed some comments from the later part of the thread.  I found them highly disturbing.  Frankly, they were disturbing enough that many other Wikimedians I know would have walked away from the projects entirely; we cannot afford to allow people to be browbeaten for being able to demonstrate on a repeated basis that they're productive and valuable members of our community. 

 

I find it disturbing that there seemed to be an effort to shut down a discussion when someone raised concerns about how WMF funds are being used.

 

 

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.

It may be a reason to draw this to the attention of the Wikimania Scholarship Committee, or the WMF Travel and Supports grants staff.  It is not appropriate to start a thread on a mailing list that has thousands of subscribers. As it turns out, there is good reason to doubt a significant amount of what was said anyway. 

We need to stop enabling behaviour like this.  The Wikimania-L mailing list is not an appropriate place to rail against another Wikimedian.  None of the Wikimedia-related mailing lists are.  This is an excellent example of bullying, and it needs to stop. 

I'm perplexed about how this discussion could be considered bullying. An uncomfortable discussion is different from bullying. If you have a concrete example of bullying in this thread (admittedly I may have overlooked one), I would be appreciative if you would contact me off-list and perhaps we can have an off-list discussion.

"It is not appropriate to start a thread on a mailing list that has thousands of subscribers" is a statement of opinion. I feel that it should be possible to have a civil discussion about this matter in public. There has been no private information leaked here (at least not that I have observed). A conversation that is uncomfortable is not necessarily the same as a conversation that is forbidden. If nonpublic information was being discussed then yes, that should probably be moved to a different venue. That is not the case here.

I think it would be fine to move this discussion onto Meta so that thoughts could be organized in a threaded, more easily understood way. I say that in hopes of keeping the conversation organized, not in an effort to stop it.

Pine

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