Hi,

[ Since my question was repeatedly handled as my desperation of inability to achieve the scholarship, I had to wait until Wikimania finished. :-) And also this is not about someone going to Wikimanias again and again, it is about granting Wikimania scholarships to same persons again and again]

I hope I could ask some questions directly:

* Why scholarship committee selecting same persons again and again for years?

* What are the advantages to local community / Wikimedia of having a "permanent" Wikimania scholarship holder?

* Why no regular Wikimedian get any scholarship, eventhough a developer's wife got scholarships in multiple years even without any kind of significant contributions?

* Is this scholarship committee solely depend on the "selling point" provided by the applicant?

* Even now none of the Wikimanians shared anything with our community about Wikimania, we even didn't see them anywhere near wikis. Did they attend the Wikimania? How could we get their contributions to the Mania?

A slightly elaborated conversation is attached below (direction: bottom to top), I got no clarity even after that. Please help.

Thanks and Regards,

Praveen P

User:Praveenp (ml.wp, commons, translatewiki)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com>
Date: 4 May 2015 at 11:17
Subject: Re: Wikimania Scholarship
To: praveenp <me.praveen@gmail.com>

Hoi,

I know the WMF, it does not pull pranks like that to the best of my knowledge. I would not even be surprised that there is a ticket for the exact issue that you highlighted. (I am not looking for one, I have interest). My point is again, it is NOT about having great language skills, it is not about how often someone went. It is about how much of a difference you may make at the conference. Preparing a speech is the way I have done it and so can you.

Thanks,

GerardM

On 4 May 2015 at 07:16, praveenp <me.praveen@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

My point is not about someone going to Wikimanias again and again, it is about Wikimania scholarships are granted to same persons again and again. According to your argument persons with better language skill would be granted scholarship, and there is nothing wrong with it. IMO that is against Wikimedia philosophy and ethics. A scholarship committee is for assessing applicants through various ways. If they solely depend the "selling" point given by the applicant, there shouldn't be this scholarship committee :-).

Consider this private post by me (I've added you), which is about a server error in application[1]: https://plus.google.com/+praveenp/posts/XtB1b9fmqcZ
This roughly translates as, "I tried to apply Wikimania Scholarship, even server told me - F*** you". It was 19 January, and I was pretty sure that I wouldn't get any scholarship. I saw couple of other similar posts sharing same feeling. We are not Nostradamus :-) but we just know. And also it did happen just as we expected.

I doubted that whether this should be shared or not (As you've clarified, this can easily be marked as inability to achieve scholarship). But on second thought, if this happened on ml.wikipedia, this would happened on every other projects.

Regards,
Praveen. P
User:Praveenp

[1]: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T87182

On Sunday 03 May 2015 02:02 PM, Gerard Meijssen wrote:

Hoi,
I have been to many Wikimanias myself. At every one of them I gave a presentation and I made it a point to have an idea of what it is that I achieved while being there. Your point is that the same people have been there, that is in and of itself not so relevant. It is what they achieved, it is how they networked. When people are known to be good at that, you will find that they often return to Wikimania.

This year I do not have the bandwidth to go to Wikimania so I did not apply, I did not prepare a presentation even though it is trivially easy for me to do so.

When you want to go to Wikimania, make sure that you are clear why you want to go, what you intend to achieve and make that obvious. That is why you may be selected for a grant. There is no justification in all the good work that you do when you cannot or do not express how going to Wikimania makes a difference.

You have to sell this idea. There is no point in comparing yourself with others. They hope to achieve what they hope to achieve..

Thanks,

GerardM

On 3 May 2015 at 09:57, praveenp <me.praveen@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

It is hard for me to digest that scholarship committee is selecting same persons again and again for last 6 or 7 years. I just put myself as an example but I am sure there were many others have applied. :-)

Regards,
Praveen. P

On Sunday 03 May 2015 01:16 PM, Gerard Meijssen wrote:

Hoi,

Good to hear from you.. There are no policies except for the ones that you know of as well. Obviously it makes a difference when you are able to sell the reason why you should go to Wikimania. If someone does a better job than you ... what can I say.

The most obvious and easy way to get in is to submit proposals for a talk, a workshop or anything else that shows that you want to achieve something..

Hope that helps :)

Have fun

Gerard

On 3 May 2015 at 09:38, praveenp <me.praveen@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

I don't know whether you are the right person but I truly believe you may have some ideas to answer my doubt :-) If I remember correctly, I did apply Wikimania scholarship last couple of years but never got one. :-( However every year User:Viswaprabha got scholarship even with his minimal wiki contributions. I know he is a great e-mail generator, but other than that I really wish to know whether there are any policies which restrict new people from getting scholarship.

As you may know I translate Mediawiki, edit Wikipedia articles, file bugs, translate and contribute to commons, actively participate discussions (mostly as devils advocate :-) ) etc.. None of it never counts.

Regards,

Praveen. P
User:Praveenp