I'm shocked to read about this. Grant recieving & execution is a
serious process especially since the Chapter is a legal body and there
has been much disgruntlement in the past on financial matters.
Misappropriation of funds is a criminal act.
I would caution all people requesting grants to :-
* Plan & propose the detailed plan, with specifics, estimated costs.
timeline, deliverables and outcome.
* Spend money wisely & appropriately. Rs 6,100/- for an anniversary
cake is completely ridiculous. Cakes can be cheaper and no fancy
graphics required.
* Keep proper bills & accounting of all expenditure.
* Put up all accounts after the event & re-imburse unspent money.
* Each expenditure to show which person is responsible or who carried it out.
* Publish the expenses to the community as a matter of principal routinely.
It is extremely easy to lose one's reputation which cannot be restored
in your lifetime!
On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 4:20 PM, sibi kanagaraj <civil.sibi1(a)gmail.com> wrote:
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…
) 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_…
. 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/Swatantr…
(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_Wik…
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_Out…
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#mediaview…
. 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
User:Commons Sibi (
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ACentralAuth&target…
)
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--
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur
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