Hi Tito,

I would to add to what Pavan and Ashwin said. Firstly I agree with both of them, stressing the fact that community-based selection process is not ideal for all the communities. This is for several reasons;

There may be users who are only contributing to the main spaces without much interaction with other contributors (comparatively new users). In such cases, these users can be good potential participants for such training, but eliminating them on the basis that they are not able to start a discussion on village pump is not fair.
Comparatively new users would be hesitant to start such discussion. Also there may be users who haven't ever been to a real life Wiki-event, and such mandates will only worsen and dampen their interest and changes to interact with the broader community.
Not every user is comfortable to participate in discussions of this sort (non-content related). I have come across a lot of users who actively participate in content related discussions, but never in this kind of stuff. Now starting such discussions and they being main subject of that will be a big no-no for them.
As Pavan said, there is also a factor community health. Not all communities in India are neutral towards all users. We have witnessed disrupted power dynamics, and these conversations will worsen them.

With all these points, I am not advocating that community discussions/endorsements are not important, they are, but not in this case. When a major project is being planned it comes up to the relevant communities, and discussions take place. But for an individual to participate in a training, such stuff give unnecessary burden.

I remember this conversation coming up when we hosted TTT 2019 in Visakhapatnam. It was decided that we will have a place for this in the form, but not make it mandatory.

I would like to conclude saying that this is a not the best way to do it, and making it mandatory is not at all fair.

Best,

Krishna Chaitanya

On Sat, Sep 7, 2019 at 10:29 AM Tito Dutta <trulytito@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello,
There are various opinion on this. On one hand, we have received feedback not supporting community selection on village pump. On the other hand, we have also got a several feedback and suggestions.
Thanks for adding your input on this. We have noted these. Additional comment from other Wikimedians are welcome.

Thanks
Tito Dutta
Note: If I don't reply to your email in 2 days, please feel free to remind me over email or phone call.

On Sat, 7 Sep 2019 at 08:10, Ashwin Baindur <ashwin.baindur@gmail.com> wrote:
Pavan, thanks for your input. You do make a valid point. Selection by community where the community spirit is absent is likely to throw up unsuitable candidates because the selection is now based on group dynamics and we have all seen how wrong that can go.

If CIS A2K is providing Advanced Wikisource workshop, it is good for asking help from prospective host communities to host the event, but not selection of suitable candidates. That is the prerogative and responsibility of CIS A2K. The easiest way for a program to go downhill is to choose less suitable candidates over more deserving ones. That process necessarily must have both subjective and objective inputs. The objective inputs can come from the demonstrated body of work, the subjective has to be based on long term interaction with editors and get the community inputs.

Please note there is a difference between community inputs vs asking community to select.

I urge that this aspect be rethought out and taken into consideration. Since our WikiSource community is essentially small, our resources limited and WikiSource is volunteer effort driven, it is imperative that the most suitable candidates be chosen.

On Fri, Sep 6, 2019, 8:52 PM pavan santhosh <pavansanthosh.s@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello Jayanta,

I would like to appreciate you and team for planning and rolling out this training. Along with that, I would also like to raise a major concern which is unrelated to bidding but is more about program design.

Meta page about this event says that "The selection [of participants] will be done by each Indic Wikisource community.". Apart from all good intentions behind this process, I would like to point out that in many cases this is likely to create barriers for participation.
Communities with community health issues: For some communities which are having community health issues, this will only result in further damage.
Even for remaining healthy communities: Even in those communities, I would like to point out to you that there are still several community members who never felt comfortable in commenting or posting anything in their respective village pumps, in almost all languages.
At large, this approach is going to be counter productive to community members who by nature are not so social. And we can not exclude them. Also, in some cases, this will give more power to power networks and structures which can result more exclusion. At large this is structurally creating a way for exclusion.

Apart from my stand, I would like to acknowledge that I feel this process is considered to set up to increase accountability in participants and improve community involvement and agency. But, I believe we can find other ways to solve issues with accountability. I can, with all due respect to the people who thought out the process and people who suggested this, strongly say this is not acceptable way to deal with accountability question or for that matter even the question of improving community collaboration.

Best,
Pavan.

On Wed, Aug 14, 2019 at 10:23 PM Jayanta Nath <jayantanth@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Wikimedians,

It gives us great pleasure to inform that the Wikisource Advance Training 2019 program organised by CIS-A2K is going to be held from 11 October & 13 October 2019.

Advance Wikisource Training is a residential training program is planned for Indic Wikisource community (including English) members. Last year we focused on Wikipedia and conducted the Wiki Advanced Training at Ranch, India. Also, Earlier Indic Wikisource Community Consultation has been conducted in 2018 at Kolkata.

This year CIS-A2K is interested to collaborate with the community in hosting the event. Interested community members, please check the following link for proposal for hosting at their city:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Events/Wiki_Advanced_Training/2019/Bids

It is requested to All Indic Wiki-librarians, kindly apply your request to join this event at your language wikisource village pump with separate section. As per community decision, we will select the participants.

Please consider sharing this process details with your community members.

If you have any questions, please let us know.

Regards,

Jayanta Nath
Wikisource Advisor
CIS-A2K

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