Abhinav, I think it's a valid expectation for a public report from any volunteer in the movement when the donation money is spent. So, please don't apologize to me. But there are many factors — priorities in life, time commitment, need for something, and many more that stops one from being available for post-event documentation.

Maybe the following would help explain. Our user group tries to document a lot. To put things into a perspective, our recent-most event, the 16th anniversary of Odia Wikipedia, has a long and detailed documentation in Odia (https://or.wikipedia.org/s/1bia) - thanks to contributors like Sangram Keshari Senapati, Bikash Ojha and many others who managed to document a lot of valuable portions from the discussions. We have recorded about 50 Gb of interviews and sessions just during this event that we now have no bandwidth to edit and upload. It will take a few more months for us to do that. :)

As a new user group, we have also supported neighboring communities like Santali where we interviewed many of the active and new Wikimedians (almost 50 Gbs of media again) during a workshop that we helped organize with support from A2K.

These are just a couple of examples of what we intend to do and how things turn up differently in reality. Trust me, we really want to document publicly as much as we can and there are genuine factors that slow many of us down. But point noted - there is always a room for improvement. I personally assumed that as there is a Etherpad note that Tito and others at A2K had created during the two-day meeting, sharing that with the community was enough. We indeed had a discussion and Sailesh who works at A2K and other colleagues at our user group can share more about the same.

Subhashish


On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 5:20 PM Abhinav srivastava <abhinav619@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello Netha,

I had no idea about you neither I am directing at you. This is for other Wikimedias residing in India. 

Sorry for the inconveniences.

Abhinav

On Fri 10 Aug, 2018, 5:18 PM Netha Hussain, <nethahussain@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear all,

My response to Abhinav's question, just to clarify about my attendance at WMCON 18 : 

2.)    I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate in the Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of them was invited? I wish to hear.  

 I am an Indian Wikimedian and I was selected by the WMF to participate in Wikimedia Conference 2018. I attended in my capacity as a volunteer and delivered the Diversity statement and led the diversity discussion there. I was not informed about this Bangalore conference conducted by the CIS, and I do not expect to be invited because I live in a different country, and flying me to India would have been very expensive. Additionally, my role in WMCON 2018 was to talk specifically about Diversity, which is not exclusively an India-related topic. I did not represent any affiliate from India, either.

The complete list of participants who attended WMCON 18 can be found here.

Regards
Netha


On Fri, 10 Aug 2018 at 13:28, Abhinav srivastava <abhinav619@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello Tanveer and Subhashish,

 

Thank You, Tanveer for acknowledging, responding, apologizing and most importantly assuring on transparency.

 

I still have a few concerns and I wish to write back. I would appreciate if I can hear back.

 

1.)    Your proposal also mentions on inviting Experienced Indian Wikimedians. While, as per your response I do not find any Wikimedian attending in this category. I would like to record a suggestion. Bengaluru is one of the highly populated cities and also comprising a high number of migrant populations. In the upcoming events, you can invite Experience Wikimedians from other languages groups which still do not have a User Group and are based in Bengaluru. They may not be attending the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin, they may not be even from your focused languages. The idea is very similar to the statement put forward by your organization and Wikimedia India during the Wiki Conference India, “While some communities have dynamic leaders and enough community level activity…….this cannot be said for all communities.”


2.)    I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate in the Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of them was invited? I wish to hear.


3.)    Once you complete the Meta page, I would request you to please share on this thread. I would encourage you and your team to document as much as you can about your activities on Meta.


4.)    It is already to my understanding that the absence of your communication manager has led to defaults in your newsletter. I would like to re-iterate as documented on the other mail thread, Wikimedia Communities are voluntary driven, some staff should devote time and keep sharing. This is just a suggestion.

 

@ Subhashish: Sorry to cross-post a bit from the other thread, I happened to miss your last message since another message popped in within 10 minutes and I couldn’t distinguish. I believe putting comments about your personal experiences at Wikimedia Movements wasn’t the best sportive thing one could do. Since those were put on a public thread, so, on a public thread, I would like to apologize. I still may remain unconvinced on not having bandwidth, reports and other issues, but, Yes, I shouldn’t have brought your personal story.

Also, I advise Odia User Group to be more active in documenting about such works on their Meta page and Village Pump. Our communities are too big in nature, they often get sorted into two haves – one who dedicate more time to the movement and remain known faces amongst each other, two- who edit but devote less time to activities but they also put their contributions. There are numerous such silent editors in every community. Please take this only to be a suggestion, no negative remarks here.

 

@Satdeep : I was expecting to hear from you. As Tanveer, points out on having spent roughly Rs 2 lakhs, this is amount is much more than that spent on to endorse a scholarship to Wikimania.  But that’s not my question, I think we should refrain from that on this thread. You were a part of the conference were no heeds to transparency and reporting was made (even the CIS-A2K staff accepts this). Secondly, you hold a chair in AffCom and also a WMF staff (yes part-time). I am of the opinion that neutrality has somewhere been disturbed at your end. A personal freindly suggestion. 

 

Abhinav


On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 3:11 PM Subhashish Panigrahi <psubhashish@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks Tanveer for this frank clarification.

@Abhinav srivastava, I didn't check earlier that there is a point concerning me. So just a small clarification - my point was not to show how A2K organized the event in a non-transparent way but to share the fact that I was a participant and did not know very well what went behind organizing the event. Also, I participated in my capacity of a rep of Odia Wikimedians User Group who happened to live in Bangalore (so it was logistically cheaper even though we didn't go to WMCON this year). For the record, Tanveer did share with me about this factor and the second factor — that our UG will be eligible next year to send a rep — for inviting me. My participation was not in the capacity of a former employee of CIS. :)

Subhashish


On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 2:59 PM Tanveer Hasan <hasanremembers@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Abhinav, 

Please find our responses below:

==Conference==

Hello,

(a)    Did CIS-A2K organize a conference/meetup in Bengaluru this summer?:

Yes, we organised a WMCON India 2018 as per our proposal [1] that was submitted to the FDC in March 2017.

 

(b)   How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?

The delegates were not selected by CIS. Participants invited/selected by WMF to participate in WMCON 2018 [2] in Berlin were invited to this meeting. User Group representatives who will be participating in WMCON 2019 (residing in Bangalore) were invited to participate as well.

 

(c)    For all those communities who were invited (based on your response to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump, mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?

As the participants were already selected by another affiliate of WMF, we did not want to reinvent the process and hence sent them personal emails as invite to this conference. We apologise for not sending out the event agenda and details about the event on mailing list and village pump of all the Indic communities.

 

(d)   Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?

 

Our intention was not to be ‘non transparent’, the participant list was put up by WMDE Conference organising team  and we invited only those people whose name featured in the official participant list. Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, CIS and Ananth Subray, Program Associate, A2K, Subhashish Panigrahi, representing Odia User group and Dr. U.B. Pavanaja, representing Karavali Wikimedians User Group were the only participants who were present whose name was not on the Participants list.

 

(e)    When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not maintaining transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the question is NO)?

I would like to reiterate that our intention was not to be ‘non-transparent’. A2K team apologises for not sending out adequate information to communities and requisite channels of communication. We will strive to improve our communication with the community for all of our events.

 

(f)     Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?

There is a meta page that had been created but has not been completed. We will priorotise the reporting of this event and revert with relevant updates.

 

(g)    How much funds were involved?

We used an approximate amount of INR.2 lakh for this event. Major expenses were incurred in arranging transport and hospitality.

 

(h)   What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff during the workshop?

Four members of the CIS-A2K team participated in the meeting.

Mr. Sunil Abraham, Executive Director was the chief facilitator on Day 1.

Tanveer Hasan and Tito Dutta were organisers and co-facilitators for the conversations for both days.

Ananth Subray attended the event to coordinate logistics and reimbursements.  

==Reports==

(a)    What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly reports on the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?

We have defaulted on our newsletter because of the exit of our communications officer.  All the reports are updated here [3]. We will also update reports here [4] at the earliest.

 

(b)   Can we hear about the reports, shortly?

We will do our best to update reports by the end of this month.


[1]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2017_-_June_2018/Skill_Building_Initiatives#Wikimedia_India_conference_2018

[2]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Participants%27_List

[3]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports

[4]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports



Regards, 

ಭಾನು, ಆಗ 5, 2018 ರಂದು 07:22 ಪೂರ್ವಾಹ್ನ ಸಮಯಕ್ಕೆ ರಂದು Abhinav srivastava <abhinav619@gmail.com> ಅವರು ಬರೆದಿದ್ದಾರೆ:
Thank You Tito for your mail. 

I would request you to address the issues within 10 days from now. This is just a request. 

Also, one of your colleagues and also my friend informed me that he wanted to reply but his e-mail is being moderated or blacklisted. I have taken this issue with the mailing list admins and the admins have looked into the issue clarifying the said collegeue wasn’t moderated or blacklisted. In case, any issue still arises, please ping me and I will do my best to settle this. 

Thank You for writing back. 

Abhinav

On Sunday, August 5, 2018, Tito Dutta <trulytito@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello Abhinav,
On behalf of the team, I confirm that we have received your questions. Thanks for these questions.
We have a hectic schedule right now because of few things such as CIS (the main institution's) strategy meet, staff transition, grant report, and some other works.

Transparency and accountability  are very important topics. If things are not clear for a couple of events, we must work on it.

Some other member or I'll get back with answers in a few days.

(I am cc-ing Sunil Abraham, ED, of the institution, in this email)

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 Fri, 3 Aug 2018 at 13:47, Abhinav srivastava <abhinav619@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Friends From CIS-A2K,

 

I am bringing up a discussion based on few of the concerns expressed on the other mail thread. I would like to acknowledge on record, the past few years CIS-A2K has reached out to communities (besides Focussed Language Area) much more effectively. I may be the first person to say this publicly but I am sure many more would echo my views here.

 

Now what concerns me and something CIS-A2K already knows, when the community has started acknowledging your work much more, CIS-A2K has been acting as the necessary intervention in times of crisis why transparency is being not paid its due.

 

I list some of my questions which everyone is already aware of and would request a reply. I would request you to not break the bullet and reply each of them separately. Of course! If you are comfortable.

 

==Conference==

 

(a)    Did CIS-A2K organize a conference/meetup in Bengaluru this summer?

(b)   How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?

(c)    For all those communities who were invited (based on your response to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump, mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?

(d)   Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?

(e)    When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not maintaining transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the question is NO)?

(f)     Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?

(g)    How much funds were involved?

(h)   What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff during the workshop?

 

 

==Reports==

(a)    What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly reports on the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?

(b)   Can we hear about the reports, shortly?

 

 

@Satdeep: I could not find any Meta page but I do find a page which is put under-construction and this mentions you. Were you a part of this? If Yes, I am not able to understand, the entire argument you had posted yesterday about reporting guidelines and transparency.

Only If, You Were A Party to This.

To Everyone, I understand I may be playing the devil’s role here. Some of my close aides have already advised me to stay back since I am damaging my personal reputation.

My argument is simple if my personal image promotes inclusiveness and transparency. I will be happy to remain a soldier fighting.

 

 Abhinav

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--
Netha Hussain
Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology
University of Gothenburg, Sweden

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