To me, this award is reaching well beyond the scope of what the Wikimedia community should be doing. It does not, to me, align with our Movement Strategy's recommendations nor their initiatives, nor the WMF 2023-2024 Annual Plan. Just because something might be positive for the world or our community does not mean we should do such. As a gay man, I appreciate all the literature awards for LGBT+ books, but I would not support such an award from the WMF or the community. Where would this stop? Is it in scope for us to give an award for scientific research? Social justice activism? Translation software? These could all be beneficial to our community, but I don't think it would be appropriate for us to take on those endeavors.

In addition I am concerned this award will have negative effects on our fundraising. I would expect that some donors, if they found out we are awarding $3,500 to journalists in no way connected to our wikis, might be less likely to donate. I think this kind of thing has happened to other non-profits.

We are stretched too thin enough already. I believe that we should stick to our core activities, which stem from the documents linked to above.

Thanks,
Paul
User:Libcub

On 2023-05-04 1:47 PM, Olushola Olaniyan wrote:

Dear all,


My name is Olushola (User: Olaniyan Olushola). I am from Africa and have been a Wikimedia since 2014 and passionate about language. I co-lead the Oral History documentation of Nigerian indigenous languages ( see more about it here ). I am part and parcel of the working group for this Journalism Award. Together with other community members and some foundation staff, we have co-created the submission guidelines and award criteria, including that articles should be English language articles published in a major outlet. 


Everything regarding the rationale for this award is being done in consultation with members of our African communities, aligned with our goals to increase exposure for the work we love in the region and close knowledge gaps. 


One thing to mention is that articles about Africa, especially written by journalists with a local perspective, must be better represented in our language Wikipedias, including English. 


With this being a brand-new initiative, it was the best time to learn. 


It is a pilot, and we all see this as an experiment to draw more attention to journalists' important role as content creators on Wikipedia. 


You will agree that we need to celebrate existing journalism excellence that helps fill knowledge gaps online. 


The working group conferred, and since this is a pilot, we decided together that it was a good idea to consider the need to limit the scope to collect data and insights easily. We understand the sentiment behind language in Africa and beyond, and we always wanted to keep everything simple. We know that no language is superior to the other, so this is a pilot. From here, we will likely assess the impact we can have before scaling. 


We wish to expand this initiative with more regional volunteers should it succeed - and we hope it will. 


We already have more than a hundred entries! 


Thank you 

Shola 


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