We should give much more priority for scholarships to Wikimedians who have
or will in future have visa difficulties. Ideally that means hosting
Wikimania in relatively open countries at least every other year. But also
we need to at least decide the venue 18 months ahead. That way if we know
that someone won't be able to get a visa to the following year's Wikimania
and couldn't to the most recent Wikimania but could get a visa to the
upcoming Wikimania we can and should prioritise them for scholarships in
the Wikimania where they have best chance of getting a visa.
Of course this is a sensitive issue, the most difficult countries to get
visas for are also among the countries where we have hosted the largest
Wikimanias. But an annual Wikimania for those of us with widely accepted
passports could at least be a biannual Wikimania for Wikimedians from
countries with less popular passports.
Remember we are unusual in our conference attendees. A global academic
conference is going to have rather less difficulty getting visas for
tenured professors than we are going to have getting visas for people from
the same countries, especially for those wikimedians who don't have jobs.
WereSpielChequers
On 12 July 2016 at 22:59, Deryck Chan <deryckchan(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I think we do consider (1) and (2), but it's down
to the scholarship team
and local team to decide how they're implemented next year.
Deryck
On 11 Jul, 2016 1:06 pm, "Pine W" <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
A few other issues that may be worth examining:
1. Whether people who have not received a Wikimania scholarship within a
certain number of years should get priority for scholarships.
2. Whether users who are from backgrounds that don't have a corresponding
APG-funded affiliate that independently funds scholarships should have
priority for WMF scholarships
3. What the scholarship self-reports from the past several years tell us
about the benefits of Wikimania for scholarship recipients.
4. What Wikimetrics and qualitative measures tell us about Wikimania
attenance for attendees as a whole and about scholarship recipients as a
subgroup. For example, do we have data that demonstrates that (a) Wikimania
attendees in general, and (b) scholarship recipients, were more active in
the Wikimedia movement (measured quantitatively by edits and qualutatively
in terms of leadership roles) after attending Wikimania for the first or
second time? What can we learn from this data about the strengths and
weaknesses of Wikimania as well as the current scholarship system?
Thanks,
Pine
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