Hi all, As an active wikimedian from India, I am just sharing my personal take on the whole thing
1) Achal as Fellow : Some of the folks commented that it was inappropriate for Achal Prabhala selected for this position, also being a member of the Foundation Advisory Board. I think it is the designation as fellow that is misleading in the first place...and unlike the Board of Trustees, AFAIK, Advisory Board has no real powers but is yet another formal group of volunteers. We already have a lot of Foundation employees who are former volunteers and who got recruited to staff by becoming known for their volunteer work. I was wondering why there was no hue & cry earlier ? If somebody is doing good work within the scope of objectives of the Foundation, let us appreciate that. Think of the transparency of the whole stuff that whatever he is planning to do is well announced and even has an open grants page which is out there for public viewing.
2) Achal & India : Achal was always a guiding force in the Wikimedia movement in India, not necessarily as an Adv Board member. He was always supportive and encouraging our various individual volunteer efforts in India. His efforts and support behind the Wikimedia India chapter is self explanatory in one of the mails that I had forwarded to the foundation list earlier. MZMcBride laments "*Achal has a growing influence on Wikimedia, particularly its new operations in India*" . With no disrespect to MZMcBride, may I ask, "*So what ?*". If somebody is doing some good work, let them get due credit for this. What next ? Jimmy Wales has a growing influence on Wikipedia and Wikimedia ? I would ask Achal to take this a compliment :) Btw having known Achal personally for some time now, he is a not a person who goes around and professes the good work he is doing and I believe, that is the reason why he is not recognized for what he does.
3) Importance of documenting oral citations: Keegan & some others have already done that earlier. Let me dare not to say that again and again. And let us not jump into conclusions on things we don't really know and understand.
Personal mudslinging is something that is uncalled for in a public list like this. If there is a problem or gap in the process of grant request and approval, in general, let us discuss that which is more productive.
Regards Tinu Cherian
On Sat, Jan 22, 2011 at 2:26 PM, Keegan Peterzell keegan.wiki@gmail.comwrote:
On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 10:21 PM, Wjhonson wjhonson@aol.com wrote:
You are mistaking the problem. It's not that a piece of knowledge is not googleable. It's that a piece of knowledge is not published whatsoever.
Never published. Anywhere. At any time. Ever. That's quite a different animal.
All disapproval of the Fellowship process appointment in this case, I fully understand D. Gerard's (IMO, misworded) point and what Wjohnson's point is as well. If we intend for the WMF to actually spread free knowledge, these sort of documentaries are important. David's point would ring true with me about the "teen en.wp" admins (to paraphrase) if I assumed that they knew of the efforts since the fall of the Soviet Union to document Bulgarian folk songs and stories. I own a few field recordings and have followed the "west's" interest in this cultural documentation. I would expect a great proportion of this mailing list to know of these studies, because this isn't run of the mill editing that is discussed here.
The point is that financing a grant to document oral history is important. Ask American musicologists what we would do without Alan Lomax's recordings and the work of the Smithsonian in the 1920's and 1930's recording folk, jazz, and blues. Don't knock it until you try it.
-- ~Keegan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l