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_g…
The *goals* is probably the most important part which needs to be discussed
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania/Scholarships/Context_analysis_200…
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(a)wikimedia.org> ha
scritto:
On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 11:14 AM, Jessie Wild
<jwild(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 11:02 AM, Nathan <nawrich(a)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 Foundation
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