Hoi, The point I made and the point that I make again. You did not ask, you do not know and you consider your opinion to be of paramount importance. In stead of asking you go from a fixed point of view that are limited and denounce a plan because everything has to be done elsewhere first to be relevant/realistic. Let me tell you how I see India. It is frighteningly big. It has a bewildering amount of angles, viewpoints, possibilities and potential. To realise the potential for the possibilities that exist in India, experiments are in order and they do happen. They happen because the scale is so huge. The Netherlands were I come from is small by comparison and in many ways better developed. That does not matter much because India has the potential to become as advanced and developed in the areas that I care for really quickly. What dreams do you have in relation to Wikidata. What potential do you see. How do you realise such dreams. My dreams and how I see them come together are and is documented on my blog. You can see it in the work I do. Now Ravi what scares you or, can you see a future where we work and dream together and "share the sum of the knowledge that is available to us" with everyone. Thanks, GerardM PS you may know that I was disheartened when I heard that the WMIN budget was denied for the reasons given. It sucks. However, there is no point to introduce this here. WMIN and CIS have their own budgets and their own responsibilities. When the two find it in themselves to work together they get more done. More done for the people in India, That is the one thing that is important. On 23 April 2014 20:46, Ravishankar <ravidreams(a)gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Ravi, Please see no. 9 on Meta here [1] where we discussed the potential benefits of Wikidata for Indic projects. In addition to this, I would like to give a broader context and background for this program, which will also help answer some of your concerns. As the community well knows that in the ongoing WMF grant we have international travel component. As per the original approved budget it was Rs. 1,803,248/-, which we revised to Rs. 900,000/-. (Please note that we announced the revision in the budget on this list and sought feedback from the community and also wrote to WMIN EC seeking their feedback). See this for reference [2]. We (Subhashish and I) have used this money to travel to Wikimania 2013-Hongkong. It was a huge learning experience about the movement and I felt it will be so nice for our communities in India to get this exposure. In fact I have invited many of the global Wikimedians to visit India and interact with the communities here. I also felt guilty that I am getting this opportunity and not many volunteers in India, who could put this experience to much better use. At this moment as a Program Director I had taken a unilateral decision to not use the WMF grant for international travel but rather see if we can get global expertise to India with this money and to create interaction opportunities with communities here. You may note that we have not budgeted any international travel in the current budget. Some of Wikimedians on the list may know that my visit to WMDE DivCon was on a scholarship. During this visit I had met Gerard and I was extremely impressed by the possibilities of Wikidata and the long term value add it could have to all the Indic projects. See my post on this list [3]. Gerard also got more interested in the Indic projects and has since then been engaging with volunteers from India. Our conversations continued virtually since then. I have also learnt from Gerard (and it is important to note) that Wikidata could throw open knowledge and images from commons in many of our Indian languages that are small and currently do not have any Wikimedia project or community. Just imagine making available pictures from commons in Gondi and Santali. Looking at these immense possibilities, I had requested him to visit and to demonstrate the possibilities of Wikidata. To which he has agreed but expressed his inability to bear the travel costs. Please note he is a volunteer and is unemployed. I felt it is a good value for money to get him down and we created this page for community consultation [4]. However, these plans could not materialise for various reasons. During this planning stage I did write to friends in the WMIN EC about these plans, asking for their inputs to gain maximum benefit for the various India Wikimedia communities, and asked if they would be interested to co-organize some of the events/locations. Some of the EC members showed interest. Also some of the active community members across languages did know about this plan through many informal conversations and discussions. All of these people knew that Gerard is the resource person. So it is not a secret as you intend to make it sound. Moreover, Wikidata has some complexity and someone like Gerard could share it better. You will also see from the design of the program that it is more intended to strengthen the community. There are plans of involving Open-Data community in India, linguists, etc. Now coming to your question of expense estimate of Rs. 450,000/- towards Resource Person. As we have stated in the budget note here [5] it mostly includes a) his travel to India from Netherlands and visa charges; and b) travel and stay expenses within India during his visits to more than 12 locations within a month's time. In fact it is a lot of work that he committed to do in a month's time, only because of his passion for Wikidata and what it could do for the Indic projects. There was no intention of him making money with this. Apologies that we should have stated the expenditure break-up in more detail than what we currently did and avoided this confusion. We did not allocate this expenditure under Travel and Stay expenses for the following reasons. Gerard was twice rejected visa to India and the consulate suggested that he apply for a Business visa so a Resource Person agreement with "fees" (which otherwise entirely goes for travel and stay expenses), we felt would help. Also we did not want to create any "International Travel" expenditure item in our budget. Hope this helps clarify the background and your concerns. While, we could continue the debate on the value for money of the Wikidata India Marathon, it is unfair to insinuate Gerard in your criticism of the CIS-A2K program plans. Let's focus on the plans in discussion. Will also reply to the question about Wikidata on Meta soon. Gerard, apologies that you got dragged into this. Trust you will assume good faith and understand our sincere intentions about this program, whether we will be able to do it or not. Best, Vishnu [1] Grants_talk:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/The_Centre_for_Internet_and_Society/Proposal_form#Replies_to_FDC_Staff_about_CIS_Programs [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMF-A2K_Revised_Budget_%28draft%29_… [3] This is the posting on list just after I returned from DivCon http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimediaindia-l/2013-November/010670.… [4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Events/Wikidata_I… [5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/India_Access_To_Knowledge/Draft_Work_plan_J… On Thursday 24 April 2014 12:16 AM, Ravishankar wrote: