On 25 March 2012 14:30, Anirudh Bhati
<anirudhsbh@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 12:54 AM, Pradeep Mohandas
<
pradeep.mohandas@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> A bunch of observations:
> 1. I've never seen such scrutiny of any Wikipedian's contributions. I'm
> disappointed also to see this scrutiny being done by only a section of the
> community. I think the Indian community needs to speak up on this - whether
> for or against such scrutiny even if being done under particular
> circumstances. This must be done, in my opinion, in a way that shows the
> scrutiny is only wrt the particular condition while still respecting the
> editor for tAking the time and editing Wikipedia.
are you talking about? Stating that a recently hired communications
consultant has close to zero experience editing Wikpedia is quite
relevant to discussions that happen during IRC office hours, specially
in the light of the fact that Hisham has previously stated that no
established Wikipedians applied for work with India Programs.
Please read my statement in its entirety. It is pretty clear. I did not think that your line of questioning was Wikipedian-like. My suggestion/observation here was to inform the Wikipedian in question or at least for the record, that the question was only in relation to the WMF Office position and not as a Wikipedian. There is the question of how you define expertise. I have been on Wikipedia for 5 years but have still not read many of the rules there or participated in many discussions. I just use common sense and civility in my edits and discussions on Wikipedia and its talk pages. So, I clearly would not meet your definition of "expert". The number of edits or the years of experience that a person has on Wikipedia cannot and should not define expertise. Have you questioned the Wikipedian in question on the person's understanding of Wikipedia's rules to state that the person does not know the ways of Wikipedia, purely based on the fact that the person has been a Wikipedian only for 2 months. The person may have been a Wikipedian only for 2 months but might know more than a Wikipedian who has been editing for the last 5 years.
Foundation employees and consultants are likely to be scrutinized more
than regular WP'ians, because they are paid for the work they do.
These are community funds we are talking about raised because our
community works their ass off to produce the content that's present on
our projects. In the discussion linked above, it is quite apparent
that Hisham hired a newbie user even when there was a much more
qualified candidate available.
Are Wikipedians scrutinised at all was my general question, above. I support that WMF employees and consultants must be scrutinized by the community and must be scrutinised more. They must also be scrutinised when they are working on projects like GLAM. I thank you for taking a proactive role on this. My only point here was that more community members must join in to make sure that a single or a group of Wikipedians do not push POV.
For now, nobody on the India Programs team has any decent experience
editing articles on the English Wikipedia, in short, they are all
newbies.
I would humbly disagree with you here. I have no time nor inclination to raise evidence in support of my claim. You are entitled to your opinion on this point, of course. But, again it is a single person's POV that this is the case. Again, I would not take the community's silence as agreement with this statement. If the community does agree with this statement, I would still not, as I am entitled to.
And this has continued despite the community asking for
old-hands and despite Hisham's assurances that he is looking for
someone intimately familiar with WP processes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:India_Education_Program/Analysis/Independent_Report_from_Tory_Read
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:India_Education_Program/Analysis/Independent_Report_from_Tory_Read&diff=prev&oldid=473097755
Is this too much to ask for?
I don't know.
I must also point out that the stated selection criteria and
responsibilities in the case of the Communications Consultant and
Operations Consultant were altered after the candidates were
announced. We want expert Wikipedians and not social media
consultants because we are looking at increasing participation on our
projects, and not enhancing the social media experience.
I can only request that the Office stand by the selection criteria and responsibilities that it lays down at the beginning of the process. Whether the Office must disclose all the reasons for selecting a candidate over other candidates is a sticky issue. It is not general practice to reveal these points in public. I am not sure whether it would be responsible practice on Wikipedia either. While I support disclosure of the reasons for a candidate's choice, I am not sure how responsible or practical it is.
I hope this clarifies my statements adequately. If you still have doubts please raise it over email only. I will try and get back to you asap.
warm regards,
Pradeep