On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 5:22 PM, Risker <[email protected]> wrote:

>
>
> On 21 May 2017 at 20:12, Pine W <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 3:34 PM, Risker <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> I'm sorry, Pine....but no.  It's naming and shaming.  If Praveen had
>>> wanted to highlight the frequency of Wikimedians being granted Wikimania
>>> scholarsips, they could have done exactly what Mike Peel did - compare the
>>> relevant lists and highlight the frequency of users receiving one, two or
>>> three grants over the four years for which data is available.  That would
>>> have been - and is - a reasonable point of discussion.  It turns out that
>>> Praveen's information was incomplete at best, and incorrect at worst.
>>>
>>
>> It's possible that I misread something, but the question that I read in
>> Praveen's original email was, "Then, what is the advantage of selecting
>> same persons again and again for scholarship? Isn't it better to let more
>> different people to share and experience global community?" I don't see how
>> citing a specific example amounts to naming and shaming. Unless I'm
>> overlooking something, there was an honest question of whether current
>> system of selecting awardees should be modified and examples of the
>> outcomes of the current award system were provided. I think it is risky to
>> read negatively into others' motives, and at this point I don't see
>> evidence that would support a view that there was malicious intent in the
>> examples being provided. The examples may be uncomfortable, but that's a
>> very long way from being malicious.
>>
>
> I think you may have missed some comments from the later part of the
> thread.  I found them highly disturbing.  Frankly, they were disturbing
> enough that many other Wikimedians I know would have walked away from the
> projects entirely; we cannot afford to allow people to be browbeaten for
> being able to demonstrate on a repeated basis that they're productive and
> valuable members of our community.
>
>


I find it disturbing that there seemed to be an effort to shut down a
discussion when someone raised concerns about how WMF funds are being used.



>
>>
>>>
>>> That one specific individual has received more than one of them, and
>>> someone is implying that the grantee failed to live up to their undertaken
>>> responsibilities, is not a reasonable way of discussing those points.
>>>
>>
>> I disagree. If there are examples of grantees not fulfilling their
>> obligations but being awarded subsequent grants, that would be a problem. I
>> don't want people to be fearful of being attacked for discussing situations
>> in which they reasonably think that there may be a problem. I think that an
>> underlying issue may be the lack of transparency in the awards
>> applications. If there was more transparency then venerability would be
>> less of a challenge. I realize that this is a complex problem, and
>> hopefully there can be constructive discussions about how to address it.
>>
>
> It may be a reason to draw this to the attention of the Wikimania
> Scholarship Committee, or the WMF Travel and Supports grants staff.  It is
> not appropriate to start a thread on a mailing list that has thousands of
> subscribers. As it turns out, there is good reason to doubt a significant
> amount of what was said anyway.
>
> We need to stop enabling behaviour like this.  The Wikimania-L mailing
> list is not an appropriate place to rail against another Wikimedian.  None
> of the Wikimedia-related mailing lists are.  This is an excellent example
> of bullying, and it needs to stop.
>
>
I'm perplexed about how this discussion could be considered bullying. An
uncomfortable discussion is different from bullying. If you have a concrete
example of bullying in this thread (admittedly I may have overlooked one),
I would be appreciative if you would contact me off-list and perhaps we can
have an off-list discussion.

"It is not appropriate to start a thread on a mailing list that has
thousands of subscribers" is a statement of opinion. I feel that it should
be possible to have a civil discussion about this matter in public. There
has been no private information leaked here (at least not that I have
observed). A conversation that is uncomfortable is not necessarily the same
as a conversation that is forbidden. If nonpublic information was being
discussed then yes, that should probably be moved to a different venue.
That is not the case here.

I think it would be fine to move this discussion onto Meta so that thoughts
could be organized in a threaded, more easily understood way. I say that in
hopes of keeping the conversation organized, not in an effort to stop it.

Pine
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