Talk:WikiProject India Nurturing

Project WIN

Preface

Work plan

Roadmap

Requirements

Discussion

Good initiative

I read the proposal. It makes sense to me, small incremental steps with tangible milestones. --AmritasyaPutra (talk) 06:02, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

• Thanks. --Tito☸Dutta 08:10, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Money issues

India has 1/6 of the world's people and when Wikipedia participants in India are organized enough to request it, the Wikimedia community in India should have 1/6 of the Wikimedia movement's community funding. As more planning and outreach is done, I would like for the community in India to have more conversations and come to consensus about how Wikimedia movement funds can be traded to make it easier for Wikipedians in India to become more engaged.

I know that there have been a lot of disputes in India about funding in the past.

I wish that somehow Wikimedia communities in India could provide funding at a scale for outreach in a way that no one would dispute. In particular -

• If in some city anyone can rent a computer lab for meetups
• And provide tea and biscuits at the meetup
• And provide travel compensation to make it easier for people to attend (bus or taxi fare in the local area)
• And have staff do boring infrastructure functions, like do accounting for the meetup and metrics reporting

then I would like to see more groups in India get funding for these things. Where I live in America, a cup of tea costs $2.50, or Rs 150. If no one questions the big funding that goes to Western countries, then definitely funding for meetups in India should be given. I worry a lot that India is not getting its fair share of the movement's funding, and I would like to see more local groups in India requesting their own local funds. Starting small and doing more over time would be nice. I am not sure of the way forward, but the Wikimedia movement should direct an investment of money and attention into India. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:16, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

You are bang on! Can't emphasize more. Even the requested projects are always on the backfoot... for as little as $300. --AmritasyaPutra (talk) 13:49, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

• Thanks, but it seems to be an over-all feedback on WMF-India relation. This project does not have any funding request now, nor it plans any meet-up etc. Regards. --Tito☸Dutta 05:53, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

I think notions like "fair share" are misleading here, and so are facile calculations like "dollars per capita". I am fairly familiar with efforts past and present in India, and I am confident in asserting that at least 90% of the reasonable funding requests are approved, both by WMF and by CIS and WMIN, and that there is a desire and a readiness to fund much more, "when Wikipedia participants in India are organized enough to request it" as you say. The fact of the matter is that there is relatively little initiative for off-wiki work (for example, the almost complete lack of regular meetups -- surely the lightest and simplest of off-wiki activities -- even in the major cities). In other words, it is not lack of funding that is the cause for little activity. I, too, would like to see volunteers taking on the organization of regular meetups in their city, and would support funding those meetups (NB: I no longer personally make funding decisions). Asaf (WMF) (talk) 19:49, 6 October 2015 (UTC)