Grants talk:TPS/Wikimania scholars

Name missing and clarification

I have received a message from Ladsgroup (talk · contribs) asking why her his name isn't on the list of scholarship recipients, as she he says she received a scholarship from the Wikimedia Foundation. Could someone look into this please?

While I'm here may I also kindly ask, out of interest, whether the list is intended to be a full disclosure of scholarship recipients or whether recipients had an opt-in or opt-out option? The impression I received earlier was that it was going to be opt-in only. CT Cooper · talk 22:32, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

One rather stupid thing, I'm "he" and "his" Amir (talk) 23:27, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

My apologies; for some reason I got the impression you were female. CT Cooper · talk 14:05, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi there! Michael is still working on finishing this list, so it wasn't mean to be called out as complete yet - sorry for the confusion. There are known gaps, additions are likely to be in progress for the rest of today. If your name isn't listed now, please check back in 24 hours. At that point, please do post again here if you spot further errors :)

As for the disclosure, as part of the scholarship agreement this year, all recipients who accepted the scholarship agreed to having their username posted on this list, and to submitting an on-wiki report about some aspect of their experience at the event (where again, username only need be disclosed). Private info (real names, etc) should not be posted. Although in past years a list of all scholars has not been part of the process, we're experimenting with it this year in order to bring the Wikimania scholarships process more in line with movement values around balancing accountability for donor dollars with user privacy. It is also consistent with WMF's other grantmaking practices as a transparent funder. Happy to hear feedback as the experiment progresses for further iteration next year! Cheers, Siko (WMF) (talk) 23:41, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

There is an error, My user is Ladsgroup but my family name is "REDACTED", you posted my family name instead of my user name. Thank you for your work in here, I appreciate itAmir (talk) 23:47, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Ack! Fixed. So sorry, Amir :( Thanks for your understanding as these kinks are worked out. Siko (WMF) (talk) 00:05, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the quick responses. The decision to fully publish the list of scholarship recipients is a welcome development and should bring further transparency to the process which applicants have been asking for. CT Cooper · talk 14:05, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Glad to hear you think so too! Siko (WMF) (talk) 21:46, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Good

Thank you very much for this list. I also like the three options for reporting and I'm looking forward to seeing 100+ such contributions. --Nemo 12:21, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the positive feedback, Nemo - I'm looking forward to seeing the reports too! Siko (WMF) (talk) 16:16, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Same every year?

I have heard some talk from some people that Wikimania scholarships tend to go to people who in the past have gotten Wikimania scholarships, along with the wish that in the future a recent scholarship to Wikimania would be a grading criteria which decreased the likelihood that a person would get a scholarship when there were other suitable candidates in a region. In the past, I think it was never possible for scholarship judges to use past awards as a criteria for giving new awards, and so far as I know, this is the first published list. I have no idea about the extent to which these claims are valid but at least now people will be able to discuss the issue openly.

I am writing to suggest that the value in having variety among recipients in the awarding of scholarships be considered for the future.

Thanks for publishing this list. Blue Rasberry (talk) 01:11, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

In the last two awarding process (2013, 2014) [I don't know to comment about before that], previous scholarships was not a criteria when scoring, but taken into account before the final list of recipients were decided. The committee discussed and considered a negative weighting for applicants who have either previously attended or at least previously attended as a result of a scholarship. However, we couldn't agree on a good and fair system so what actually happened in the end was that previous scholarships was used a kind of tiebreaker among thosea applicants that were similar in scores. -- KTC (talk) 10:18, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

I am not sure that giving scholarships to people who have the best scores regardless of previous awards is any more fair than excluding people on the basis of past awards, but either way, it is a decision that is made in awarding scholarships and I would not call either choice a default. This is not to criticize the scorers or to say that things should have been done differently, but I mean to say that perhaps in the future more people could comment on the scoring process and suggest to scorers what is best. The burden of developing judging criteria should not rest mostly on scholarship judges, but instead should be from the community. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:58, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

From what I know of 2011 and 2012, applicants who got a scholarship the previous year were generally/by default completely disqualified from getting a scholarship again, with new recipeints being favoured even if they got a much lower score, so I believe the general direction has been towards making it easier for repeat applicants, and that has been reflected in the results this year – to the upset of some.

I agree completely that the criteria and process should be developed by the community as much as possible, but RfCs on the issue don't always attract a wide audience and those really interested tend to end-up serving on the Scholarship Committee, myself being an example of this. Also, resolving situations where there's no community consensus will be a challenge – how to deal with repeat recipients being one of those. On the side note, I wouldn't endorse the description of the Scholarship Committee as scholarship judges, as our main task was to develop the criteria and process and assign scores to applications – the final decision on who gets a scholarship is made by the WMF. CT Cooper · talk 09:54, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

My own take on this from the perspective of WMF grantmaking (which now funds these scholarships): the committee has been doing a great job with what is a very difficult task, but there does still seem to be room for rethinking together the overall design of how recipients are selected. Community input is super important, and my sense is that increased transparency can only help with this, though agree with CT Cooper's comments above about limitations of the consensus process, particularly where solutions need to be implemented on a give time-table, and with some limitations on what is ideal vs. feasible and aligned with best practices. My hope is that publishing the public list of scholars will help establish an additional baseline for further discussion! As will publishing brief reports back from scholarship recipients who attend Wikimania this year (another new experiment in progress for this year), and a new scholarships survey that we plan to send to all applicants after this year's conference, similar to other grantee surveys we run and focusing on collecting more data on the scholarships-making-process itself (as opposed to past surveys which seems to have functioned more as a Wikimania attendee survey). In short, we should have even more data to help ground future decisions this fall :) Looking forward to discussing further! Siko (WMF) (talk) 12:31, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

deadline

I want to thank to Sbouterse (WMF) the change to 21 days for the report. I've come back from England this Monday and I think that one week more is better to do the report. --Millars (talk) 12:18, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Glad to hear it helped, Millars! I recently returned from travels myself and realized you all might be feeling as overloaded as I am :) Good luck catching up, and looking forward to your report, Siko (WMF) (talk) 16:27, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Missing of a name

The list is still incomplete. Where is アンタナナ, for example? Can someone of the scholcom carefully check the list in here with their own internal records name by name (nick by nick :) ), please? I suppose that there other missings possible. --Base (talk) 16:26, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

That user was funded via another budget/process from WMF grantmaking, actually - selected by the PEGrant program officers, not funded from the Wikimania scholarships budget or selected by the committee. So, correctly left off the scholarships list. Internal records were double checked already, so more time hasn't been prioritized to work on this so far. If you have specific omissions in mind, though, still welcome to share them. Thanks! Siko (WMF) (talk) 22:25, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

People's reports

Hm. 100+ guys to report on Meta while there is a separate site for the 'mania. Perhaps they should be better located on wikimania2014wiki? --Base (talk) 16:30, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Absolutely not. Wikimania wikis get closed quickly, so the stuff posted there is worthless (can't be crosslinked, edited or moved later). --Nemo 23:00, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree. Meta is the best location for reporting. Was glad to see a reminder email sent to scholarship recipients, too. --Another Believer (talk) 23:20, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Why the same page

Why don't we keep info about 2014's 'mania as well as add info about 2015's? On separate pages of course. I don't understand why the page was overwritten with the new info. --Base (talk) 18:47, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi Base, thanks for the good catch. The last section of this page was actually the links to the 2014 program (i.e. list of scholars, reports, and analysis of those reports), however the section title was mislabeled. I've updated this now. -- Shouston (WMF) (talk) 20:29, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Report requirement

Thanks for publishing the list for 2015, Shouston (WMF). Did all of the repeat recipients complete their post-conference reports last year which were required for them to be eligible? I wanted to make sure because, unless I'm mistaken, it appears like several among last year's recipients have not made their reports available while being accepted this year. whym (talk) 13:46, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi Whym, thanks so much for bringing this issue to our attention and for your patience as we looked into it. From our records, there are six 2015 scholars who got scholarships in 2014 but did not have reports listed on the TPS/Wikimania page. Three of those discrepancies can be explained by the following:

• The 2014 scholars page lists all those who were extended scholarships, but does not reflect those who could not ultimately attend due to a range of issues (e.g. they were unable to get a visa).
• Some scholars reported back to their communities through their home wiki, through on-wiki reports that did not have the right wiki category, or through other online channels. For 2014, we still accepted those other reports as fulfilling the reporting requirement, and asked scholars to copy/link over their report into the TPS/Wikimania page for consistency.

However, for the other three it seems we have made a mistake in Phase 1 eligibly assessment and have extended three 2015 scholarships to 2014 scholars who did not submit reports. As this was the first year we had WMF staff handling Phase 1 evaluation, we will be updating our internal processes, training, and oversight to ensure this mistake doesn't happen again (e.g. keeping an up-to-date list of the scholars who actually attend Wikimania, a list of those who submit / do not submit reports, ensuring multiple checks for eligibility criteria).

In order to rectify this, we will be extending an additional three scholarships to individuals who would have been selected if not for our error. However, we will not be rescinding the scholarship awards this year as the error was ours. Instead, we have reached out to the three scholars, let them know the situation, and that we will have higher expectations for their 2015 report because they did not submit their 2014 report.

Once we have heard back from the new scholars, I will update the TPS/Wikimania Scholarship page with the new additions.

Again, thank you so much for bringing this to our attention. Please let me know if you have any other concerns or questions. -- Shouston (WMF) (talk) 18:33, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for posting this report. Even with this revelation, I would argue the process has been less error prone this year than it was the year before. This wasn't the only error made in Phase 1, though thankfully the other one was spotted before any scholarships were awarded. I agree with the decision made in the circumstances and I hope the process can be further fine tuned next year. CT Cooper · talk 20:37, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Sati. This was a sore point with some scholarship rejections, they felt that others that had been granted scholarships despite not making their report was unfair on them. I couldn't/can't comment on individual cases, but if this allows for some of the strong applications that just missed out on scholarships, that is good news. --StuartPrior (talk) 14:35, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the detailed report. While the error was undesirable, I appreciate the accountability and fairness demonstrated here. whym (talk) 10:52, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi All, I just wanted to let you know that I have updated the list with the usernames of the new recipients, after they have accepted and confirmed their attendance. -- Shouston (WMF) (talk) 03:39, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Wikimania scholars 2016

Will someone please post the list of Wikimania scholars 2016? Thank you -- Ата ^(talk) 18:49, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I'm currently abroad but I think a list can be published already. We can later integrate the list as more scholarships are assigned, e.g. due to additional non-WMF funding. Nemo 21:47, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Thank you Nemo and MJue for publishing the list! Could you make it clear who has received full and who partial scholarships, please? Also, as the order is obviously non-alphabetical — might it be that the scholars are sorted by the scores of the phase 2 evaluation? Is there a possibility of having those scores revealed? (Perhaps also for those who did not get the scholarship on some other page, so that the full image could be seen). Thank you for the answers in advance. I would also ping EYoung whom I also thank for the whole process. --Base (talk) 12:48, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for the suggestion, Base. I've updated the scholars list, which was initially ordered by full to partial scholarships, and not necessarily by scores :). While I can't speak to whether the final scores could be published, I will also flag EYoung (WMF) on this point as well. MJue (WMF) (talk) 19:28, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Oh, I would very much like to see what score I got :) Josve05a (talk) 02:23, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Survey results

Has the survey already been evaluated? I am interested in what participants voted to be the best talk of Wikimania 2016. Thanks, --Gereon K. (talk) 19:32, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

5 weeks later. Maybe Morgan has an answer? :) --Gereon K. (talk) 06:47, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Removal of name from scholarship recipient list

Hi @EYoung (WMF) and ITait (WMF):, as my visa to attend Wikimania 2017 was rejected, it will be impossible for me to submit report this year. As I will not attend Wikimania, is it ok to remove or cut my name from the scholarship recipient list. Thanks. -- Bodhisattwa (talk) 05:37, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Scholarship

I am deeply sad that no women representant of the French gender gap project les sans pagEs can attend this year due to no scholarship obtained. I was supposed to present both for the Wikimooc and les sans pages. I do not really understand the criteria of attribution. Further more, neither WMCH nor WMFR are offering scholarships. Furthermore, some members seem to include the financing of wikimania in their grants. For us, attending these events is crucial. We learn so much from them. Maybe there should be more of these, dispatched over the five continents. --Nattes à chat (talk) 11:15, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Update needed

I don't know who is responsible of this page, but there is still information from last year. Also, "This brief report is typically due 21 days after the end of the conference", so today is the last day to create the report if I understand correctly. Stryn (talk) 11:39, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Hmm, maybe they changed it, but usually it has been a month after the end of conference, (last year conference was 22-26 June, and deadline was 1 August). Also, from an email I received from Grant Administrator, one of the things we should keep in mind was: * After Wikimania, please submit your report within 30 days of the completion Wikimania 2017 by 12 September 2017, according to the instructions here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/Wikimania_scholars#Reporting. --Liridon (talk) 12:53, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for reminding that we have 30 days. --Millars (talk) 21:44, 3 September 2017 (UTC)