On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 12:58 PM, Jessie Wild <jwild@wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hi! I have a lot of Wikimania Scholarship statistics - obviously what is in the report on wiki only highlights a piece of them. As always, comments on meta reports are always helpful (there are none).

That report has been wonderful the last two years, by the way.  
    Metacommented: I've copied the stats suggestion there, and some of the other philosophical and practical questions from this thread.
    https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimania/Scholarships/2013

    • 85% of 2013 Scholars did not receive scholarship in 2012 or received a scholarship but were unable to attend in 2012
    • 5% of 2013 Scholars received a partial scholarship in 2012
    • 10% of 2013 scholars were also scholars in 2012 
    Thank you!
     
    Those are for WMF scholarships. It is important to note that about 40-50% of attendees at Wikimania who arrive on scholarships are actually sponsored directly by chapter rather than WMF. It is possible that this group of people are repeat attendees/scholars (I don't know).

    Also, as long as this is an application-based process, with no sense of nomination-for-recognition (in contrast to a purely achievement-based scholarship process) this will have a bias towards those who are good at writing a scholarship application.  Which is probably a much smaller pool than the set of amazing people who would meld well with other maniacs.
     
    It is also true that many chapters send board representatives and/or staff to Wikimania. Again, this may contribute to the feeling that the same people are always attending. (Note: the same is true for WMF and WMF board.)

    Yes.  The presence of institutional staff and governance at Wikimania has grown, including sponsored attendees and the # of plenary spots in the program dedicated to it.  This has shifted the focus of the events a bit, perhaps away from creation and curation... (Are we becoming a movement of institution builders and grantors?)  

    This accounts for O(100) people - including yours truly - who attend by virtue of their staff or governance role, paid for by the movement.  I have mixed feelings about this, as you know.  While not always the same people, these are consistent roles over time.  But this is a different topic worthy of its own discussion - and now has its own section on the talk page above.

     
    One specific example of this is a former scholar from the Kyrgyz Wikipedia. On first glance, it looked like her aggregate edit count was low, but on further digging the committee realized she had only been editing for a year, and was already a top 5 contributor on that wiki!

    :-)  Despite posting some concerns in this thread, the overall selection process attracts a much wider pool, and is more thorough, than it was when I had anything to do with it.  (those concerns were on the table years ago as well: if you have a purely contribution-based set of criteria, and the same people apply every year, you'll choose many of the same people every year.) 
     
    I have lots of comments on the various topics that are getting throw around  -- partial scholarships, needs-based scholarships, disclosing of scholars names, data collection ... but I don't feel this is the best forum for discussion. If someone has a wiki page with these topics sectioned off, we should tackle a few together!

    ++ well said.  I will take all further comments to the wiki page. 

    Warmly,
    SJ