This is truly appalling!

Sibi, the way you have phrased this and supported your claims is commendable. These mailing lists have often seen serious matters reduced to mud-slinging and personal remarks.


 
Rohini Lakshané
about.me/rohini
Rohini Lakshané on about.me
 

2015-03-03 16:20 GMT+05:30 sibi kanagaraj <civil.sibi1@gmail.com>:
Hi all ,

This is to bring to the attention of the larger Wikimedia Community about concerns regarding Abhishek Surywanshi’s ( User profile -
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ACentralAuth&target=AbhiSuryawanshi )  wikimedia activities and use of movement funds.

While edit counts are not the only way to assess the value of a contributor and people are encourage to do outreach, I am seeing a clear pattern that he has been very active consistently only in offline activities that involve large scale funds.

History of programs or events where he has used or applied to use movement funds:

1)A Travel and Participation grant request for travel to US from India for Wikimedia Outreach in US - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:TPS/AbhiSuryawanshi/NASA_LARSS_program . The community and EC members of Wikimedia India disapproved of this grant request.

2)Wikipedia Summit Pune - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Summit_Pune . How much was spent and how? Where is the expenses report? Following failure to abide by terms regarding financial transactions, Wikimedia India banned supporting him financially and passed a resolution regarding this. ( As per http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Talk:Grants/WikiConnect_Pilot_-_January_2015 )

3)Various (mostly flight) travel and stay to many different conferences / meetups across India in the recent past. Community approval for these are not clearly seen.
       *Swatantra conference 2014 https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Requests/Swatantra_2014/Participation#Request_for_Support (On behalf of which community?)
        *India Community Consultation 201 4 - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Community_Consultation_2014#Hindi (Self-nomination (?) on behalf of Hindi Community where he has made 425 edits.
Bengali Wikipedia 10 years celebration in Kolkatta during Jan 2015 (On behalf of which community?)


Following are some of his proposed activities that will need a  grant made in near future:

1)Wikipedia Summit India in Pune during 2015  - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/WikipediaSummitIndia

2)Travel and participation grant request for 1125 US dollars for round trip travel from Pune to United States for conducting Indic outreach in United states - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Harvard_India_Conference_and_Wiki_Workshop

3)WikiConnect - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiConnect - No idea about the budget. The pilot he is doing in Nashik needs 6100 INR for a cake itself and reimbursement for 15 days of his stay and food.

4)Further outreach in US - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Indic_Language_Wikipedia_Outreach_in_United_States


Some of the concerns:

1.He is using and proposes to keep using movement funds in large scale with questionable impact which are against the learnings already documented at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Evaluation

2.He is using fictitious and misleading titles like Ambassador, Wikipedia to establish non-transparent relationships with numerous organizations in and outside India - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiConnect/Pilot_Project#mediaviewer/File:Wikipedia_Nashik_Workshop_Participants_January_2015.jpg . This has the risk of damaging goodwill and brand name for Wikipedia.

4)When a current GAC member and former Wikimedia India EC member seeks details regarding his grant request and reminds the current EC about the ban, he is hinting legal action against chapter (As per http://wiki.wikimedia.in/Talk:Grants/WikiConnect_Pilot_-_January_2015 )

As a community member, I request the funding agencies in the movement to take stock of this situation and implement intense scrutiny for funding requests with proper evaluation of program design and due process for having community approval by experienced Wikimedians.

Please donot proceed ahead without community discussion or approval. 

Executive decisions circumventing community approval will never help the movement.


-Sibi Kanagaraj


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