Hi,
transparency on the selection can only work when also the application texts are 
public because we have many very active Wikimedians who are not very clear 
about what they ever did or actually do, how this is relevant to Wikimania and 
if they are able to and want to share this at Wikimania and back in their local 
communities afterwards. However, if only the results were published, there 
could be no useful discussion between the committee and others without 
information from the application texts.
But when applications are public, it would make absolutely no sense to have a 
committee for the selection because every decision by the committe could be 
easily be debated. When the expertise of the committee is questioned, people 
would be hesitant to participate as already described in this thread. Hence, 
only a public selection done by the community as a replacement for the 
committee would make sense.
When the community would decide on the applications, we had to define who would 
be part of that community: who's eligible to vote on these? should the votes be 
public? would large discussions be allowed? etc. As we have lots of experience 
with public elections, we can also easily name the disadvantages of these: 
Popularity contests for only those people who can stand public criticism, 
sometimes by few very loud destructive people or even enemy groups, on 
everything they every did. Tons of people would be refrain from applying at 
all, something we strongy have to face at the moment with elections for 
adminship or other committees as pointed out by Risker.
Of course, we had transparency as a result and more public discussions around 
the selection, but we would have no safe space for applicants at all (also in 
terms of sensitive data like personal living conditions and anonymity). I see 
no third working model besides these and my preference would clearly be the 
committee. But if you like, you can, of course, seek consensus on the other 
model. I will raise my concerns there as pointed out here.
Best,Martin/DerHexer(long-time scholarship committee member and co-organizer)
      Von: Jonathan Cardy <werespielchequ...@gmail.com>
 An: Wikimania general list (open subscription) 
<wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org> 
 Gesendet: 9:09 Mittwoch, 19.April 2017
 Betreff: Re: [Wikimania-l] WMF Scholarships to attend Wikimania
   
Risker is right.
You can't publish such a table this year because it would break the promises 
made to applicants who were declined.
 You could start a discussion on meta, and make a proposal to publish such data 
for future Wikimanias. I'd hope you wouldn't get consensus, but if you did we 
could then monitor the effect on the 2018 Wikimania. If the requirement to 
publish details on unsuccessful applicants as well as successful ones was 
deterring a significant proportion of applicants, or deterring certain types of 
applicants such as applicants from particular countries, then I'd hope 2019 
would revert to the obviously superior system of not publicly listing the 
people who applied for scholarships but were declined. I do appreciate that in 
the future historians studying Wikipedia would really appreciate this data, and 
I can see the point of putting it in a sealed archive and publishing after all 
concerned have probably died. I'm not sure I see the point in publishing it 
now, if people are concerned about fairness then get someone you trust to run 
for the scholarship committee.

Regards
WereSpielChequers

On 19 Apr 2017, at 04:14, Risker <risker...@gmail.com> wrote:


I would like the Wikimedia Foundation NOT to do that.  Our user privacy is to 
be respected.  People who applied for scholarships had every reason to expect 
that the WMF would not publish their names if they were not awarded one, for 
example. Nobody who applies is guaranteed a WMF scholarship; however, several 
other organizations actively provide scholarships to community members who did 
not receive a WMF scholarship.  Transparency does not require putting users 
into embarrassing or awkward situations, and many users who applied for 
scholarships may not have done so if they were told that the names and details 
of their application would be published.   The scholarship committee is made up 
largely of volunteers, and they don't deserve the inevitable brickbats that 
would be thrown their way if particularly vocal members of the community 
disagreed with their decisions. And it's a given that just about every member 
of the community will disagree with one or more decision made by the committee. 
 So no, please don't publish any details of any application, or how any 
individual candidate was assessed.  That's not transparency.  

Risker/Anne

On 18 April 2017 at 22:51, Dr. U.B. Pavanaja <pavan...@vishvakannada.com> wrote:

Hello, I would like WMF to make the list of applicants, their contributions, 
the weightage used for each kind of contribution and the final list of 
scholarship awardees in a table form. Since WMF is run by the contributions of 
the volunteers, such a transparency is definitely needed from WMF. I hope WMF 
will oblige. Regards,Pavanaja  From: Wikimania-l [mailto:wikimania-l-bounces@ 
lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ellie Young
Sent: 19 April 2017 01:23 AM
To: Wikimania general list (open subscription)
Subject: [Wikimania-l] WMF Scholarships to attend Wikimania Everyone who 
applied for a scholarship to Wikimania '17 has been notified about the status.  
 If you have not heard, please check your spam filter, or send email to ask 
about the status to:   wikimaniascholarships@ wikimedia.org April 18 is the 
deadline for people who were offered a scholarship to respond. A final list of 
everyone who was awarded and able to accept will be posted to on the wiki in 
early May. We expect registration for Wikimania '17 to go live on or before May 
1st.   -- Ellie YoungEvents ManagerWikimedia foundationeyo...@wikimedia.org​  
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