I am scheduling a phone call with the Quadriga organization to try to get to the bottom of this. I was not aware that the prize money from 2008 has never arrived. I will raise that issue as well.

On 7/10/11 3:56 PM, church.of.emacs.ml wrote:

Hi,

Vladimir Putin has been awarded the Quadriga Award, which is "dedicated to all of those whose courage tears down walls and whose commitment builds bridges"[1]. This is the same award Wikipedia received in 2008 (Wikipedia being represented by Jimmy Wales). The award has been forwarded to Wikimedia Germany by Jimmy. The price money (25k€) apparently has not be transfered yet, due to financial problems of the funding organization.

This disposition by the Quadriga committee has received criticism from both the German media and Wikipedians. It is seen as improper by German Wikipedians that Putin, responsible for human rights violations in Russia, shares the same award as Wikipedia. Some of them therefor call for a return and rejection of the Quadriga Award.

It is especially noteworthy that Jimmy Wales is listed as a Quadriga Board member[2], which made some media report that he did not vote against Putin. In fact, he had nothing to do with the award, was not consulted, and states that he would not have voted for giving Putin any award.[3]

The question now is: What's the best way to react to this? It seems that a proposal to RfC on returning Wikipedia's award is accepted by many German Wikipedians. Jimmy and Wikimedia Germany would probably have to agree with this, if we want to do this. Also, there's a question on whether to do this RfC on Meta or German Wikipedia.

Any comments?

Regards, Tobias User:Church of emacs

[1] http://tafelderdemokratie.de/quadriga2/en [2] http://tafelderdemokratie.de/quadriga2/en/content/board-trustees [3] http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Caf%C3%A9&diff=91073...

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