Dear all,
I would like to thank Mr. Nikolai for initiating this discussion and providing an opportunity to explain in detail how the scholarship system for affiliations and community delegates in the CEE region operates. It's important to remember that there is no one-size-fits-all solution in this matter, and each year, we gain new insights from our previous experiences.
Every year, our aim is to foster inclusivity by inviting a diverse range of guests from all communities and affiliations across the CEE region. This conference serves as a unique platform for knowledge exchange, a testament to the collaborative efforts of the conference organizers, the Wikimedia Foundation, and the CEE Hub. We deeply value the contributions of the previous conference organizers and extend our sincere gratitude to the WMF for their invaluable financial and knowledge support, which has been instrumental in ensuring that every voice is heard and every community is represented.
One of the challenges we face each year is balancing the number of affiliations from the region and the number of scholarships allocated to them. This task can be particularly challenging due to the fluid nature of affiliations, which often span regional and thematic boundaries. Additionally, establishing a clear connection between an affiliation and its region can pose difficulties. Adding to this issue is the fact that some countries have multiple affiliations. In countries such as Russia, there are many linguistic minorities and communities, and the country is federal, which makes it possible for communities within it to create different language-based, regional, and thematic affiliations. Considering that having representatives of many more affiliations from some countries as opposed to only one affiliation from others would create an imbalance in the overall representation of communities in the region at the conference, the organization committee had to introduce some restrictions in the provision of scholarship. Based on this fact, we had to introduce some restrictions in the provision of scholarships for representatives from large communities and countries since it's impossible to invite everyone who works in one language community or project, which may cause an imbalance in the overall representation of communities in the region at the conference.
For two years in a row, conference organizers have introduced standard criteria for awarding scholarships to affiliations and communities in the region for the conference. One of these criteria is the prioritization of language-based affiliations, where we provide two scholarships to all language affiliations. This is done to ensure that a particular large language community or country would not be in the majority, which would lead to inequality between communities, and we would lose the voice of small communities or affiliations. We value equality between communities and strive to ensure a fair and balanced representation at the conference. I also want to note that we have provided two scholarships for the Russian-speaking community and a total of 4 scholarships for Russia (where other languages-based affiliations are also represented), demonstrating our commitment to fairness and inclusivity. We want to assure you that the scholarship allocation process is transparent and fair, and every decision is made with the best interests of the CEE community in mind.
In the future, there should be a system for Russian-speaking affiliates in Russia that regulates who attends the CEE Meeting from the Russian language community in Russia. From the outside, it is difficult to determine these attendees, especially given the current situation in Russia, so ideally, the affiliates within Russia would come to an agreement, which could also be facilitated if required.
We also provide scholarships for invited guests. These are mainly those who sent submissions to the program and whose submissions were approved by the Program Committee. If individuals wish to participate in the conference and deliver a report to the audience, they still have a chance to receive a scholarship. The program committee and organizers of the Wikimedia CEE Meeting will deal with this issue.
I hope I have explained the current situation clearly and in detail. Please note that there is never a perfect solution, but we try to ensure that our solutions are acceptable and reasonable.
Best,
Mehman,
On behalf of the Org. Committee of the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2023 and 2024.
On Sat, May 11, 2024 at 12:06 PM Коля Красный via Wikimedia-l < wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
Good day everyone.
I’m Nikolai Bulykin, the co-founder and organizer of North-West Russia Wiki-Historians User group. You may have heard about us in connection with the previous CEE Meeting in Tbilisi. For those who haven’t - we’re thematic user group focused on the topics of history, culture, nature and geography of North-West Russia that can be simply described as «Saint Petersburg and its near and far surroundings». The affiliate was created in 2019 and we’ve managed pretty descent level of activity, at least it’s more than we’ve expected at the beginning. Also, as far as I know, we’re remaining the last active Russian-language Wikimedia affiliate in Russia while others are closed (Wikimedia RU) or just dropped their activities almost to zero. There is a bit of Tatar activity in sight, tho.
We started this affiliate on the idea to unite all the editors who works on the similar topics and organize them, because we believe that 15 organized Wikimedians can do more than 90 un-organized ones. Being honest, the idea of this group was there long before my debut in the community and, maybe, even before my first edit. As an affiliate, we managed to get assistance from the Foundation that gave us plenty of experience and insights. We were happy to share them, but then COVID happened and all international relations in Wikimedia have shrinked to 50-70-person Zoom calls that didn’t give us such opportunity. Sad but ok, that was the circumstances and we still managed to maintain high level of activity both offline and on-wiki.
When the COVID have ended we had a new treat — you all know what Russian government did (and still do) and that have closed the barely opened gates of financial aid for us. Some of us had to flee the country and others passed the opportunity to visit CEEM in North Macedonia because of travel safety concerns and suddenly appeared visas. And that also were the circumstances.
In 2023 we were hit by bad news — we were not eligible for a scholarship to send delegates to CEEM in Tbilisi. The reason provided by Mehman Ibragimov was that we’re not a language or a country community and we didn’t participate in CEE Spring (although we’ve added our articles lists to the contest). But with the help of some other Russian Wikimedians, mostly Anastasiya Lvova (who later joined us) we’ve presented the poster that described ourselves and our work. We thought it would be easier in the next year and while we consider 2023 situation as wrongful, we learnt our lesson on the «new rules». So in 2024, after the closing of Wikimedia RU Anastasiya have convinced us to lead CEE Spring in Russian Wikipedia. But to our surprise, we weren’t even listed in 2024 CEEM affiliates and communities list. After a bit more than a week we received an answer that we’re not considered as a CEE Affiliate.
Representatives of the Foundation claim that local communities know better, so why does the CEE community knows that we are part of it, while the people making decisions about scholarships for CEE events don't know this and make references in their replies about reasons not to invite us on a page that anyone can edit, seemingly with little regulation?
If equity is among the values of the Foundation, its plans, and Wikimedia community as a whole, why are special rules introduced for us regarding preference for the language community, even though we meet all the criteria (reports, activity)? And should we still do this «representative work» if we're still considered as outsiders?
Links: Our page — https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/North-West_Russia_Wiki-Historians_User_Group... Our annual reports — https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/North-West_Russia_Wiki-Historians_User_Group... Our activity page — https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/North-West_Russia_Wiki-Historians_User_Group... Our poster at CEEM-2023 — https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NWR-Hist-Poster_2023_curves.pdf -- Nikolai Bulykin (User:Красный).
Written by myself, discussed by Organizing committee of North-West Russia Wiki-Historians: Ekaterina Borisova (User:Екатерина Борисова), Paul Kaganer (User:Kaganer), Anastasiya Lvova (User:Lvova). _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list -- wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l Public archives at https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/... To unsubscribe send an email to wikimedia-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org