I made a page about the scholarships status, opportunities and challenges, by collecting hints form the proposals by Nemo and Martin, the comments i read here, and from recommendations on talk pages. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania/Scholarships/SWOT_2005-2014_and_go...
The *goals* is probably the most important part which needs to be discussed https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania/Scholarships/Context_analysis_2005... I added one to those proposed by Nemo and Martin, and a short description of what it can imply.
I didn't move Nemo and Martin's page simply because it presents a specific perspective. To discuss Wikimania scholarships goals for 2015 in a more neutral page, I thought a new one was an easier solution.
@ Lodewijk. Maybe the idea of the independency of the committee needs to be further discuss. I do understand the problem of discussing a page proposed within a bid by members of the jury and the Wikimania committee. I do not consider though that the scholarships or the program or any other "working" committee need to be independent from the local one (and vice-versa). Wikimania team is a team, not a group of committees which need to remain independent to each other to guarantee the separation of powers. having people already experienced and engaged in Wikimania is great, and different groups allow to split tasks according to skills, experience, taste and locations.
the handbook says to "begin developing scholarship criteria; develop scholarship process front page" in the early planning (one year or more before the event). https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_Handbook#Early_planning. It doesn't say who is supposed to do it. and since it is "one year or more before the event", Nemo and Martin started doing it. I trust their proposal very clearly shows that they are simply aiming at contributing to boost the impact of scholarships for the Wikimedia movement and for this very same reason Nemo asked for comments and help in this mailing list.
best, iolanda
Il giorno 14/gen/2014, alle ore 01:03, Asaf Bartov abartov@wikimedia.org ha scritto:
On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 11:14 AM, Jessie Wild jwild@wikimedia.org wrote: On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 11:02 AM, Nathan nawrich@gmail.com wrote:
As is evident in the selection criteria the scholarship committee puts forth, contributions on our wiki projects is the key component to receiving a scholarship. The scores are so close, it is really difficult (impossible?) to receive a scholarship from WMF without having contributions on wiki. The committee also tries to look at someone's contributions in relation to his/her local-wiki context. One specific example of this is a former scholar from the Kyrgyz Wikipedia. On first glance, it looked like her aggregate edit count was low, but on further digging the committee realized she had only been editing for a year, and was already a top 5 contributor on that wiki!
Just so I understand, are you saying that scholarship applicants are rated based on a score, and that this score is primarily derived from edit count?
Applications are scored on different dimensions (see selection criteria), and these scores are weighted. One score has to do explicitly participation in WIkimedia projects, and this carries the biggest weight. Edit count is a factor taken into consideration with participation.
...except the geographic quotas (I believe we had those in 2012, at least?) combined with paucity of candidates did result in some scholars who were not active editors (i.e. edited less than 5 times a month). Of the 7 scholarships accepted by people from sub-Saharan Africa in 2012, only 3 went to active editors.
Asaf
Asaf Bartov Wikimedia FoundationImagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality! https://donate.wikimedia.org _______________________________________________ Wikimania-l mailing list Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l