[Wikimediaindia-l] CIS-A2K : Transparency and Other Issues

[Abhinav srivastava]

Dear Friends From CIS-A2K,



I am bringing up a discussion based on few of the concerns expressed on the
other mail thread. I would like to acknowledge on record, the past few
years CIS-A2K has reached out to communities (besides Focussed Language
Area) much more effectively. I may be the first person to say this publicly
but I am sure many more would echo my views here.



Now what concerns me and something CIS-A2K already knows, when the
community has started acknowledging your work much more, CIS-A2K has been
acting as the necessary intervention in times of crisis why transparency is
being not paid its due.



I list some of my questions which everyone is already aware of and would
request a reply. I would request you to not break the bullet and reply each
of them separately. Of course! If you are comfortable.



==Conference==



(a) Did CIS-A2K organize a conference/meetup in Bengaluru this summer?

(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?

(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your response
to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump, mailing
list, reaching out to User Group representatives?

(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?

(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not maintaining
transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the question is
NO)?

(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?

(g) How much funds were involved?

(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff during the
workshop?





==Reports==

(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly reports on the
mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?

(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?





@Satdeep: I could not find any Meta page but I do find a page which is put
under-construction and this mentions you. Were you a part of this? If Yes,
I am not able to understand, the entire argument you had posted yesterday
about reporting guidelines and transparency.

Only If, You Were A Party to This.

To Everyone, I understand I may be playing the devil’s role here. Some of
my close aides have already advised me to stay back since I am damaging my
personal reputation.

My argument is simple if my personal image promotes inclusiveness and
transparency. I will be happy to remain a soldier fighting.



Abhinav

[Tito Dutta]

Hello Abhinav,
On behalf of the team, I confirm that we have received your questions.
Thanks for these questions.
We have a hectic schedule right now because of few things such as CIS (the
main institution's) strategy meet, staff transition, grant report, and some
other works.

Transparency and accountability are very important topics. If things are
not clear for a couple of events, we must work on it.

Some other member or I'll get back with answers in a few days.

(I am cc-ing Sunil Abraham, ED, of the institution, in this email)

Thanks
Tito Dutta
Note: If I don't reply to your email in 2 days, please feel free to remind
me over email or phone call.

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Dear Friends From CIS-A2K,
I am bringing up a discussion based on few of the concerns expressed on
the other mail thread. I would like to acknowledge on record, the past few
years CIS-A2K has reached out to communities (besides Focussed Language
Area) much more effectively. I may be the first person to say this publicly
but I am sure many more would echo my views here.
Now what concerns me and something CIS-A2K already knows, when the
community has started acknowledging your work much more, CIS-A2K has been
acting as the necessary intervention in times of crisis why transparency is
being not paid its due.
I list some of my questions which everyone is already aware of and would
request a reply. I would request you to not break the bullet and reply each
of them separately. Of course! If you are comfortable.
==Conference==
(a) Did CIS-A2K organize a conference/meetup in Bengaluru this summer?
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your response
to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump, mailing
list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not maintaining
transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the question is
NO)?
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?
(g) How much funds were involved?
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff during
the workshop?
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly reports on
the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
@Satdeep: I could not find any Meta page but I do find a page which is put
under-construction and this mentions you. Were you a part of this? If Yes,
I am not able to understand, the entire argument you had posted yesterday
about reporting guidelines and transparency.
Only If, You Were A Party to This.
To Everyone, I understand I may be playing the devil’s role here. Some of
my close aides have already advised me to stay back since I am damaging my
personal reputation.
My argument is simple if my personal image promotes inclusiveness and
transparency. I will be happy to remain a soldier fighting.
Abhinav
_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

[Abhinav srivastava]

Thank You Tito for your mail.

I would request you to address the issues within 10 days from now. This is
just a request.

Also, one of your colleagues and also my friend informed me that he wanted
to reply but his e-mail is being moderated or blacklisted. I have taken
this issue with the mailing list admins and the admins have looked into the
issue clarifying the said collegeue wasn’t moderated or blacklisted. In
case, any issue still arises, please ping me and I will do my best to
settle this.

Thank You for writing back.

Abhinav

Post by Tito Dutta
Hello Abhinav,
On behalf of the team, I confirm that we have received your questions.
Thanks for these questions.
We have a hectic schedule right now because of few things such as CIS (the
main institution's) strategy meet, staff transition, grant report, and some
other works.
Transparency and accountability are very important topics. If things are
not clear for a couple of events, we must work on it.
Some other member or I'll get back with answers in a few days.
(I am cc-ing Sunil Abraham, ED, of the institution, in this email)
Thanks
Tito Dutta
Note: If I don't reply to your email in 2 days, please feel free to remind
me over email or phone call.

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Dear Friends From CIS-A2K,
I am bringing up a discussion based on few of the concerns expressed on
the other mail thread. I would like to acknowledge on record, the past few
years CIS-A2K has reached out to communities (besides Focussed Language
Area) much more effectively. I may be the first person to say this publicly
but I am sure many more would echo my views here.
Now what concerns me and something CIS-A2K already knows, when the
community has started acknowledging your work much more, CIS-A2K has been
acting as the necessary intervention in times of crisis why transparency is
being not paid its due.
I list some of my questions which everyone is already aware of and would
request a reply. I would request you to not break the bullet and reply each
of them separately. Of course! If you are comfortable.
==Conference==
(a) Did CIS-A2K organize a conference/meetup in Bengaluru this summer?
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your
response to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump,
mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not maintaining
transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the question is
NO)?
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?
(g) How much funds were involved?
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff during
the workshop?
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly reports on
the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
@Satdeep: I could not find any Meta page but I do find a page which is
put under-construction and this mentions you. Were you a part of this? If
Yes, I am not able to understand, the entire argument you had posted
yesterday about reporting guidelines and transparency.
Only If, You Were A Party to This.
To Everyone, I understand I may be playing the devil’s role here. Some of
my close aides have already advised me to stay back since I am damaging my
personal reputation.
My argument is simple if my personal image promotes inclusiveness and
transparency. I will be happy to remain a soldier fighting.
Abhinav
_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

[Tanveer Hasan]

Dear Abhinav,

Please find our responses below:

==Conference==

Hello,

(a) Did CIS-A2K organize a conference/meetup in Bengaluru this summer?:

Yes, we organised a WMCON India 2018 as per our proposal [1] that was
submitted to the FDC in March 2017.



(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?

The delegates were not selected by CIS. Participants invited/selected by
WMF to participate in WMCON 2018 [2] in Berlin were invited to this
meeting. User Group representatives who will be participating in WMCON 2019
(residing in Bangalore) were invited to participate as well.



(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your response
to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump, mailing
list, reaching out to User Group representatives?

As the participants were already selected by another affiliate of WMF, we
did not want to reinvent the process and hence sent them personal emails as
invite to this conference. We apologise for not sending out the event
agenda and details about the event on mailing list and village pump of all
the Indic communities.



(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?



Our intention was not to be ‘non transparent’, the participant list was put
up by WMDE Conference organising team and we invited only those people
whose name featured in the official participant list. Sunil Abraham,
Executive Director, CIS and Ananth Subray, Program Associate, A2K,
Subhashish Panigrahi, representing Odia User group and Dr. U.B. Pavanaja,
representing Karavali Wikimedians User Group were the only participants who
were present whose name was not on the Participants list.



(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not maintaining
transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the question is
NO)?

I would like to reiterate that our intention was not to be
‘non-transparent’. A2K team apologises for not sending out adequate
information to communities and requisite channels of communication. We will
strive to improve our communication with the community for all of our
events.



(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?

There is a meta page that had been created but has not been completed. We
will priorotise the reporting of this event and revert with relevant
updates.



(g) How much funds were involved?

We used an approximate amount of INR.2 lakh for this event. Major expenses
were incurred in arranging transport and hospitality.



(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff during the
workshop?

Four members of the CIS-A2K team participated in the meeting.

Mr. Sunil Abraham, Executive Director was the chief facilitator on Day 1.

Tanveer Hasan and Tito Dutta were organisers and co-facilitators for the
conversations for both days.

Ananth Subray attended the event to coordinate logistics and
reimbursements.

==Reports==

(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly reports on the
mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?

We have defaulted on our newsletter because of the exit of our
communications officer. All the reports are updated here [3]. We will also
update reports here [4] at the earliest.



(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?

We will do our best to update reports by the end of this month.

[1].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2017_-_June_2018/Skill_Building_Initiatives#Wikimedia_India_conference_2018

[2].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Participants%27_List

[3]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports

[4]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports


Regards,

ಭಟಚು, ಆಗ 5, 2018 ರಂಊು 07:22 ಪೂರ್ವಟಹ್ಚ ಞಮಯಕ್ಕೆ ರಂಊು Abhinav srivastava <

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Thank You Tito for your mail.
I would request you to address the issues within 10 days from now. This is
just a request.
Also, one of your colleagues and also my friend informed me that he wanted
to reply but his e-mail is being moderated or blacklisted. I have taken
this issue with the mailing list admins and the admins have looked into the
issue clarifying the said collegeue wasn’t moderated or blacklisted. In
case, any issue still arises, please ping me and I will do my best to
settle this.
Thank You for writing back.
Abhinav

Post by Tito Dutta
Hello Abhinav,
On behalf of the team, I confirm that we have received your questions.
Thanks for these questions.
We have a hectic schedule right now because of few things such as CIS
(the main institution's) strategy meet, staff transition, grant report, and
some other works.
Transparency and accountability are very important topics. If things are
not clear for a couple of events, we must work on it.
Some other member or I'll get back with answers in a few days.
(I am cc-ing Sunil Abraham, ED, of the institution, in this email)
Thanks
Tito Dutta
Note: If I don't reply to your email in 2 days, please feel free to
remind me over email or phone call.

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Dear Friends From CIS-A2K,
I am bringing up a discussion based on few of the concerns expressed on
the other mail thread. I would like to acknowledge on record, the past few
years CIS-A2K has reached out to communities (besides Focussed Language
Area) much more effectively. I may be the first person to say this publicly
but I am sure many more would echo my views here.
Now what concerns me and something CIS-A2K already knows, when the
community has started acknowledging your work much more, CIS-A2K has been
acting as the necessary intervention in times of crisis why transparency is
being not paid its due.
I list some of my questions which everyone is already aware of and would
request a reply. I would request you to not break the bullet and reply each
of them separately. Of course! If you are comfortable.
==Conference==
(a) Did CIS-A2K organize a conference/meetup in Bengaluru this summer?
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your
response to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump,
mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not maintaining
transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the question is
NO)?
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?
(g) How much funds were involved?
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff during
the workshop?
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly reports on
the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
@Satdeep: I could not find any Meta page but I do find a page which is
put under-construction and this mentions you. Were you a part of this? If
Yes, I am not able to understand, the entire argument you had posted
yesterday about reporting guidelines and transparency.
Only If, You Were A Party to This.
To Everyone, I understand I may be playing the devil’s role here. Some
of my close aides have already advised me to stay back since I am damaging
my personal reputation.
My argument is simple if my personal image promotes inclusiveness and
transparency. I will be happy to remain a soldier fighting.
Abhinav
_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

_______________________________________________

Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
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[Subhashish Panigrahi]

Thanks Tanveer for this frank clarification.

@Abhinav srivastava <***@gmail.com>, I didn't check earlier that
there is a point concerning me. So just a small clarification - my point
was not to show how A2K organized the event in a non-transparent way but to
share the fact that I was a participant and did not know very well what
went behind organizing the event. Also, I participated in my capacity of a
rep of Odia Wikimedians User Group who happened to live in Bangalore (so it
was logistically cheaper even though we didn't go to WMCON this year). For
the record, Tanveer did share with me about this factor and the second
factor — that our UG will be eligible next year to send a rep — for
inviting me. My participation was not in the capacity of a former employee
of CIS. :)

Subhashish

Post by Tanveer Hasan
Dear Abhinav,
==Conference==
Hello,
Yes, we organised a WMCON India 2018 as per our proposal [1] that was
submitted to the FDC in March 2017.
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?
The delegates were not selected by CIS. Participants invited/selected by
WMF to participate in WMCON 2018 [2] in Berlin were invited to this
meeting. User Group representatives who will be participating in WMCON 2019
(residing in Bangalore) were invited to participate as well.
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your response
to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump, mailing
list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
As the participants were already selected by another affiliate of WMF, we
did not want to reinvent the process and hence sent them personal emails as
invite to this conference. We apologise for not sending out the event
agenda and details about the event on mailing list and village pump of all
the Indic communities.
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?
Our intention was not to be ‘non transparent’, the participant list was
put up by WMDE Conference organising team and we invited only those people
whose name featured in the official participant list. Sunil Abraham,
Executive Director, CIS and Ananth Subray, Program Associate, A2K,
Subhashish Panigrahi, representing Odia User group and Dr. U.B. Pavanaja,
representing Karavali Wikimedians User Group were the only participants who
were present whose name was not on the Participants list.
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not maintaining
transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the question is
NO)?
I would like to reiterate that our intention was not to be
‘non-transparent’. A2K team apologises for not sending out adequate
information to communities and requisite channels of communication. We will
strive to improve our communication with the community for all of our
events.
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?
There is a meta page that had been created but has not been completed. We
will priorotise the reporting of this event and revert with relevant
updates.
(g) How much funds were involved?
We used an approximate amount of INR.2 lakh for this event. Major expenses
were incurred in arranging transport and hospitality.
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff during
the workshop?
Four members of the CIS-A2K team participated in the meeting.
Mr. Sunil Abraham, Executive Director was the chief facilitator on Day 1.
Tanveer Hasan and Tito Dutta were organisers and co-facilitators for the
conversations for both days.
Ananth Subray attended the event to coordinate logistics and
reimbursements.
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly reports on
the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
We have defaulted on our newsletter because of the exit of our
communications officer. All the reports are updated here [3]. We will also
update reports here [4] at the earliest.
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
We will do our best to update reports by the end of this month.
[1].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2017_-_June_2018/Skill_Building_Initiatives#Wikimedia_India_conference_2018
[2].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Participants%27_List
[3]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports
[4]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports
Regards,
ಭಟಚು, ಆಗ 5, 2018 ರಂಊು 07:22 ಪೂರ್ವಟಹ್ಚ ಞಮಯಕ್ಕೆ ರಂಊು Abhinav srivastava <

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Thank You Tito for your mail.
I would request you to address the issues within 10 days from now. This
is just a request.
Also, one of your colleagues and also my friend informed me that he
wanted to reply but his e-mail is being moderated or blacklisted. I have
taken this issue with the mailing list admins and the admins have looked
into the issue clarifying the said collegeue wasn’t moderated or
blacklisted. In case, any issue still arises, please ping me and I will do
my best to settle this.
Thank You for writing back.
Abhinav

Post by Tito Dutta
Hello Abhinav,
On behalf of the team, I confirm that we have received your questions.
Thanks for these questions.
We have a hectic schedule right now because of few things such as CIS
(the main institution's) strategy meet, staff transition, grant report, and
some other works.
Transparency and accountability are very important topics. If things
are not clear for a couple of events, we must work on it.
Some other member or I'll get back with answers in a few days.
(I am cc-ing Sunil Abraham, ED, of the institution, in this email)
Thanks
Tito Dutta
Note: If I don't reply to your email in 2 days, please feel free to
remind me over email or phone call.

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Dear Friends From CIS-A2K,
I am bringing up a discussion based on few of the concerns expressed on
the other mail thread. I would like to acknowledge on record, the past few
years CIS-A2K has reached out to communities (besides Focussed Language
Area) much more effectively. I may be the first person to say this publicly
but I am sure many more would echo my views here.
Now what concerns me and something CIS-A2K already knows, when the
community has started acknowledging your work much more, CIS-A2K has been
acting as the necessary intervention in times of crisis why transparency is
being not paid its due.
I list some of my questions which everyone is already aware of and
would request a reply. I would request you to not break the bullet and
reply each of them separately. Of course! If you are comfortable.
==Conference==
(a) Did CIS-A2K organize a conference/meetup in Bengaluru this summer?
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your
response to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump,
mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not maintaining
transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the question is
NO)?
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?
(g) How much funds were involved?
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff during
the workshop?
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly reports
on the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
@Satdeep: I could not find any Meta page but I do find a page which is
put under-construction and this mentions you. Were you a part of this? If
Yes, I am not able to understand, the entire argument you had posted
yesterday about reporting guidelines and transparency.
Only If, You Were A Party to This.
To Everyone, I understand I may be playing the devil’s role here. Some
of my close aides have already advised me to stay back since I am damaging
my personal reputation.
My argument is simple if my personal image promotes inclusiveness and
transparency. I will be happy to remain a soldier fighting.
Abhinav
_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

_______________________________________________

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[Abhinav srivastava]

Hello Tanveer and Subhashish,



Thank You, Tanveer for acknowledging, responding, apologizing and most
importantly assuring on transparency.



I still have a few concerns and I wish to write back. I would appreciate if
I can hear back.



1.) Your proposal also mentions on inviting Experienced Indian
Wikimedians. While, as per your response I do not find any Wikimedian
attending in this category. I would like to record a suggestion. Bengaluru
is one of the highly populated cities and also comprising a high number of
migrant populations. In the upcoming events, you can invite Experience
Wikimedians from other languages groups which still do not have a User
Group and are based in Bengaluru. They may not be attending the Wikimedia
Conference in Berlin, they may not be even from your focused languages. The
idea is very similar to the statement put forward by your organization and
Wikimedia India during the Wiki Conference India, “While some communities
have dynamic leaders and enough community level activity

.this cannot be
said for all communities.”


2.) I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate in the
Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of them was
invited? I wish to hear.


3.) Once you complete the Meta page, I would request you to please share
on this thread. I would encourage you and your team to document as much as
you can about your activities on Meta.


4.) It is already to my understanding that the absence of your
communication manager has led to defaults in your newsletter. I would like
to re-iterate as documented on the other mail thread, Wikimedia Communities
are voluntary driven, some staff should devote time and keep sharing. This
is just a suggestion.



@ Subhashish: Sorry to cross-post a bit from the other thread, I happened
to miss your last message since another message popped in within 10 minutes
and I couldn’t distinguish. I believe putting comments about your personal
experiences at Wikimedia Movements wasn’t the best sportive thing one could
do. Since those were put on a public thread, so, on a public thread, I
would like to *apologize*. I still may remain unconvinced on not having
bandwidth, reports and other issues, but, Yes, I shouldn’t have brought
your personal story.

Also, I advise Odia User Group to be more active in documenting about such
works on their Meta page and Village Pump. Our communities are too big in
nature, they often get sorted into two haves – one who dedicate more time
to the movement and remain known faces amongst each other, two- who edit
but devote less time to activities but they also put their contributions.
There are numerous such silent editors in every community. Please take this
only to be a suggestion, no negative remarks here.



@Satdeep : I was expecting to hear from you. As Tanveer, points out on
having spent roughly Rs 2 lakhs, this is amount is much more than that
spent on to endorse a scholarship to Wikimania. But that’s not my
question, I think we should refrain from that on this thread. You were a
part of the conference were no heeds to transparency and reporting was made
(even the CIS-A2K staff accepts this). Secondly, you hold a chair in AffCom
and also a WMF staff (yes part-time). I am of the opinion that neutrality
has somewhere been disturbed at your end. A personal freindly suggestion.



Abhinav

Post by Subhashish Panigrahi
Thanks Tanveer for this frank clarification.
@Abhinav srivastava <***@gmail.com>, I didn't check earlier that
there is a point concerning me. So just a small clarification - my point
was not to show how A2K organized the event in a non-transparent way but to
share the fact that I was a participant and did not know very well what
went behind organizing the event. Also, I participated in my capacity of a
rep of Odia Wikimedians User Group who happened to live in Bangalore (so it
was logistically cheaper even though we didn't go to WMCON this year). For
the record, Tanveer did share with me about this factor and the second
factor — that our UG will be eligible next year to send a rep — for
inviting me. My participation was not in the capacity of a former employee
of CIS. :)
Subhashish

Post by Tanveer Hasan
Dear Abhinav,
==Conference==
Hello,
Yes, we organised a WMCON India 2018 as per our proposal [1] that was
submitted to the FDC in March 2017.
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?
The delegates were not selected by CIS. Participants invited/selected by
WMF to participate in WMCON 2018 [2] in Berlin were invited to this
meeting. User Group representatives who will be participating in WMCON 2019
(residing in Bangalore) were invited to participate as well.
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your
response to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump,
mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
As the participants were already selected by another affiliate of WMF, we
did not want to reinvent the process and hence sent them personal emails as
invite to this conference. We apologise for not sending out the event
agenda and details about the event on mailing list and village pump of all
the Indic communities.
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?
Our intention was not to be ‘non transparent’, the participant list was
put up by WMDE Conference organising team and we invited only those people
whose name featured in the official participant list. Sunil Abraham,
Executive Director, CIS and Ananth Subray, Program Associate, A2K,
Subhashish Panigrahi, representing Odia User group and Dr. U.B. Pavanaja,
representing Karavali Wikimedians User Group were the only participants who
were present whose name was not on the Participants list.
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not maintaining
transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the question is
NO)?
I would like to reiterate that our intention was not to be
‘non-transparent’. A2K team apologises for not sending out adequate
information to communities and requisite channels of communication. We will
strive to improve our communication with the community for all of our
events.
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?
There is a meta page that had been created but has not been completed. We
will priorotise the reporting of this event and revert with relevant
updates.
(g) How much funds were involved?
We used an approximate amount of INR.2 lakh for this event. Major
expenses were incurred in arranging transport and hospitality.
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff during
the workshop?
Four members of the CIS-A2K team participated in the meeting.
Mr. Sunil Abraham, Executive Director was the chief facilitator on Day 1.
Tanveer Hasan and Tito Dutta were organisers and co-facilitators for the
conversations for both days.
Ananth Subray attended the event to coordinate logistics and
reimbursements.
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly reports on
the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
We have defaulted on our newsletter because of the exit of our
communications officer. All the reports are updated here [3]. We will also
update reports here [4] at the earliest.
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
We will do our best to update reports by the end of this month.
[1].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2017_-_June_2018/Skill_Building_Initiatives#Wikimedia_India_conference_2018
[2].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Participants%27_List
[3]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports
[4]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports
Regards,
ಭಟಚು, ಆಗ 5, 2018 ರಂಊು 07:22 ಪೂರ್ವಟಹ್ಚ ಞಮಯಕ್ಕೆ ರಂಊು Abhinav srivastava <

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Thank You Tito for your mail.
I would request you to address the issues within 10 days from now. This
is just a request.
Also, one of your colleagues and also my friend informed me that he
wanted to reply but his e-mail is being moderated or blacklisted. I have
taken this issue with the mailing list admins and the admins have looked
into the issue clarifying the said collegeue wasn’t moderated or
blacklisted. In case, any issue still arises, please ping me and I will do
my best to settle this.
Thank You for writing back.
Abhinav

Post by Tito Dutta
Hello Abhinav,
On behalf of the team, I confirm that we have received your questions.
Thanks for these questions.
We have a hectic schedule right now because of few things such as CIS
(the main institution's) strategy meet, staff transition, grant report, and
some other works.
Transparency and accountability are very important topics. If things
are not clear for a couple of events, we must work on it.
Some other member or I'll get back with answers in a few days.
(I am cc-ing Sunil Abraham, ED, of the institution, in this email)
Thanks
Tito Dutta
Note: If I don't reply to your email in 2 days, please feel free to
remind me over email or phone call.

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Dear Friends From CIS-A2K,
I am bringing up a discussion based on few of the concerns expressed
on the other mail thread. I would like to acknowledge on record, the past
few years CIS-A2K has reached out to communities (besides Focussed Language
Area) much more effectively. I may be the first person to say this publicly
but I am sure many more would echo my views here.
Now what concerns me and something CIS-A2K already knows, when the
community has started acknowledging your work much more, CIS-A2K has been
acting as the necessary intervention in times of crisis why transparency is
being not paid its due.
I list some of my questions which everyone is already aware of and
would request a reply. I would request you to not break the bullet and
reply each of them separately. Of course! If you are comfortable.
==Conference==
(a) Did CIS-A2K organize a conference/meetup in Bengaluru this summer?
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your
response to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump,
mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not maintaining
transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the question is
NO)?
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?
(g) How much funds were involved?
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff
during the workshop?
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly reports
on the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
@Satdeep: I could not find any Meta page but I do find a page which is
put under-construction and this mentions you. Were you a part of this? If
Yes, I am not able to understand, the entire argument you had posted
yesterday about reporting guidelines and transparency.
Only If, You Were A Party to This.
To Everyone, I understand I may be playing the devil’s role here. Some
of my close aides have already advised me to stay back since I am damaging
my personal reputation.
My argument is simple if my personal image promotes inclusiveness and
transparency. I will be happy to remain a soldier fighting.
Abhinav
_______________________________________________
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https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

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[Netha Hussain]

Dear all,

My response to Abhinav's question, just to clarify about my attendance at
WMCON 18 :

2.) I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate in the
Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of them was
invited? I wish to hear.

I am an Indian Wikimedian and I was selected by the WMF to participate in
Wikimedia Conference 2018. I attended in my capacity as a volunteer and
delivered the Diversity statement and led the diversity discussion
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Documentation/Movement_Strategy_track/Day_2>
there. I was not informed about this Bangalore conference conducted by the
CIS, and I do not expect to be invited because I live in a different
country, and flying me to India would have been very expensive.
Additionally, my role in WMCON 2018 was to talk specifically about
Diversity, which is not exclusively an India-related topic. I did not
represent any affiliate from India, either.

The complete list of participants who attended WMCON 18 can be found here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Participants%27_List>
.

Regards
Netha

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Tanveer and Subhashish,
Thank You, Tanveer for acknowledging, responding, apologizing and most
importantly assuring on transparency.
I still have a few concerns and I wish to write back. I would appreciate
if I can hear back.
1.) Your proposal also mentions on inviting Experienced Indian
Wikimedians. While, as per your response I do not find any Wikimedian
attending in this category. I would like to record a suggestion. Bengaluru
is one of the highly populated cities and also comprising a high number of
migrant populations. In the upcoming events, you can invite Experience
Wikimedians from other languages groups which still do not have a User
Group and are based in Bengaluru. They may not be attending the Wikimedia
Conference in Berlin, they may not be even from your focused languages. The
idea is very similar to the statement put forward by your organization and
Wikimedia India during the Wiki Conference India, “While some communities
have dynamic leaders and enough community level activity

.this cannot be
said for all communities.”
2.) I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate in the
Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of them was
invited? I wish to hear.
3.) Once you complete the Meta page, I would request you to please
share on this thread. I would encourage you and your team to document as
much as you can about your activities on Meta.
4.) It is already to my understanding that the absence of your
communication manager has led to defaults in your newsletter. I would like
to re-iterate as documented on the other mail thread, Wikimedia Communities
are voluntary driven, some staff should devote time and keep sharing. This
is just a suggestion.
@ Subhashish: Sorry to cross-post a bit from the other thread, I happened
to miss your last message since another message popped in within 10 minutes
and I couldn’t distinguish. I believe putting comments about your personal
experiences at Wikimedia Movements wasn’t the best sportive thing one could
do. Since those were put on a public thread, so, on a public thread, I
would like to *apologize*. I still may remain unconvinced on not having
bandwidth, reports and other issues, but, Yes, I shouldn’t have brought
your personal story.
Also, I advise Odia User Group to be more active in documenting about such
works on their Meta page and Village Pump. Our communities are too big in
nature, they often get sorted into two haves – one who dedicate more time
to the movement and remain known faces amongst each other, two- who edit
but devote less time to activities but they also put their contributions.
There are numerous such silent editors in every community. Please take this
only to be a suggestion, no negative remarks here.
@Satdeep : I was expecting to hear from you. As Tanveer, points out on
having spent roughly Rs 2 lakhs, this is amount is much more than that
spent on to endorse a scholarship to Wikimania. But that’s not my
question, I think we should refrain from that on this thread. You were a
part of the conference were no heeds to transparency and reporting was made
(even the CIS-A2K staff accepts this). Secondly, you hold a chair in AffCom
and also a WMF staff (yes part-time). I am of the opinion that neutrality
has somewhere been disturbed at your end. A personal freindly suggestion.
Abhinav
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 3:11 PM Subhashish Panigrahi <

Post by Subhashish Panigrahi
Thanks Tanveer for this frank clarification.
@Abhinav srivastava <***@gmail.com>, I didn't check earlier that
there is a point concerning me. So just a small clarification - my point
was not to show how A2K organized the event in a non-transparent way but to
share the fact that I was a participant and did not know very well what
went behind organizing the event. Also, I participated in my capacity of a
rep of Odia Wikimedians User Group who happened to live in Bangalore (so it
was logistically cheaper even though we didn't go to WMCON this year). For
the record, Tanveer did share with me about this factor and the second
factor — that our UG will be eligible next year to send a rep — for
inviting me. My participation was not in the capacity of a former employee
of CIS. :)
Subhashish

Post by Tanveer Hasan
Dear Abhinav,
==Conference==
Hello,
Yes, we organised a WMCON India 2018 as per our proposal [1] that was
submitted to the FDC in March 2017.
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?
The delegates were not selected by CIS. Participants invited/selected by
WMF to participate in WMCON 2018 [2] in Berlin were invited to this
meeting. User Group representatives who will be participating in WMCON 2019
(residing in Bangalore) were invited to participate as well.
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your
response to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump,
mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
As the participants were already selected by another affiliate of WMF,
we did not want to reinvent the process and hence sent them personal emails
as invite to this conference. We apologise for not sending out the event
agenda and details about the event on mailing list and village pump of all
the Indic communities.
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?
Our intention was not to be ‘non transparent’, the participant list was
put up by WMDE Conference organising team and we invited only those people
whose name featured in the official participant list. Sunil Abraham,
Executive Director, CIS and Ananth Subray, Program Associate, A2K,
Subhashish Panigrahi, representing Odia User group and Dr. U.B. Pavanaja,
representing Karavali Wikimedians User Group were the only participants who
were present whose name was not on the Participants list.
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not maintaining
transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the question is
NO)?
I would like to reiterate that our intention was not to be
‘non-transparent’. A2K team apologises for not sending out adequate
information to communities and requisite channels of communication. We will
strive to improve our communication with the community for all of our
events.
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?
There is a meta page that had been created but has not been completed.
We will priorotise the reporting of this event and revert with relevant
updates.
(g) How much funds were involved?
We used an approximate amount of INR.2 lakh for this event. Major
expenses were incurred in arranging transport and hospitality.
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff during
the workshop?
Four members of the CIS-A2K team participated in the meeting.
Mr. Sunil Abraham, Executive Director was the chief facilitator on Day 1.
Tanveer Hasan and Tito Dutta were organisers and co-facilitators for the
conversations for both days.
Ananth Subray attended the event to coordinate logistics and
reimbursements.
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly reports on
the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
We have defaulted on our newsletter because of the exit of our
communications officer. All the reports are updated here [3]. We will also
update reports here [4] at the earliest.
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
We will do our best to update reports by the end of this month.
[1].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2017_-_June_2018/Skill_Building_Initiatives#Wikimedia_India_conference_2018
[2].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Participants%27_List
[3]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports
[4]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports
Regards,
ಭಟಚು, ಆಗ 5, 2018 ರಂಊು 07:22 ಪೂರ್ವಟಹ್ಚ ಞಮಯಕ್ಕೆ ರಂಊು Abhinav srivastava <

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Thank You Tito for your mail.
I would request you to address the issues within 10 days from now. This
is just a request.
Also, one of your colleagues and also my friend informed me that he
wanted to reply but his e-mail is being moderated or blacklisted. I have
taken this issue with the mailing list admins and the admins have looked
into the issue clarifying the said collegeue wasn’t moderated or
blacklisted. In case, any issue still arises, please ping me and I will do
my best to settle this.
Thank You for writing back.
Abhinav

Post by Tito Dutta
Hello Abhinav,
On behalf of the team, I confirm that we have received your questions.
Thanks for these questions.
We have a hectic schedule right now because of few things such as CIS
(the main institution's) strategy meet, staff transition, grant report, and
some other works.
Transparency and accountability are very important topics. If things
are not clear for a couple of events, we must work on it.
Some other member or I'll get back with answers in a few days.
(I am cc-ing Sunil Abraham, ED, of the institution, in this email)
Thanks
Tito Dutta
Note: If I don't reply to your email in 2 days, please feel free to
remind me over email or phone call.

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Dear Friends From CIS-A2K,
I am bringing up a discussion based on few of the concerns expressed
on the other mail thread. I would like to acknowledge on record, the past
few years CIS-A2K has reached out to communities (besides Focussed Language
Area) much more effectively. I may be the first person to say this publicly
but I am sure many more would echo my views here.
Now what concerns me and something CIS-A2K already knows, when the
community has started acknowledging your work much more, CIS-A2K has been
acting as the necessary intervention in times of crisis why transparency is
being not paid its due.
I list some of my questions which everyone is already aware of and
would request a reply. I would request you to not break the bullet and
reply each of them separately. Of course! If you are comfortable.
==Conference==
(a) Did CIS-A2K organize a conference/meetup in Bengaluru this summer?
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your
response to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump,
mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not
maintaining transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the
question is NO)?
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?
(g) How much funds were involved?
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff
during the workshop?
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly reports
on the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
@Satdeep: I could not find any Meta page but I do find a page which
is put under-construction and this mentions you. Were you a part of this?
If Yes, I am not able to understand, the entire argument you had posted
yesterday about reporting guidelines and transparency.
Only If, You Were A Party to This.
To Everyone, I understand I may be playing the devil’s role here.
Some of my close aides have already advised me to stay back since I am
damaging my personal reputation.
My argument is simple if my personal image promotes inclusiveness and
transparency. I will be happy to remain a soldier fighting.
Abhinav
_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

_______________________________________________

Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
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_______________________________________________
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To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
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[Abhinav srivastava]

Hello Netha,

I had no idea about you neither I am directing at you. This is for other
Wikimedias residing in India.

Sorry for the inconveniences.

Abhinav

Post by Netha Hussain
Dear all,
My response to Abhinav's question, just to clarify about my attendance at
2.) I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate in the
Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of them was
invited? I wish to hear.
I am an Indian Wikimedian and I was selected by the WMF to participate in
Wikimedia Conference 2018. I attended in my capacity as a volunteer and
delivered the Diversity statement and led the diversity discussion
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Documentation/Movement_Strategy_track/Day_2>
there. I was not informed about this Bangalore conference conducted by the
CIS, and I do not expect to be invited because I live in a different
country, and flying me to India would have been very expensive.
Additionally, my role in WMCON 2018 was to talk specifically about
Diversity, which is not exclusively an India-related topic. I did not
represent any affiliate from India, either.
The complete list of participants who attended WMCON 18 can be found here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Participants%27_List>
.
Regards
Netha

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Tanveer and Subhashish,
Thank You, Tanveer for acknowledging, responding, apologizing and most
importantly assuring on transparency.
I still have a few concerns and I wish to write back. I would appreciate
if I can hear back.
1.) Your proposal also mentions on inviting Experienced Indian
Wikimedians. While, as per your response I do not find any Wikimedian
attending in this category. I would like to record a suggestion. Bengaluru
is one of the highly populated cities and also comprising a high number of
migrant populations. In the upcoming events, you can invite Experience
Wikimedians from other languages groups which still do not have a User
Group and are based in Bengaluru. They may not be attending the Wikimedia
Conference in Berlin, they may not be even from your focused languages. The
idea is very similar to the statement put forward by your organization and
Wikimedia India during the Wiki Conference India, “While some communities
have dynamic leaders and enough community level activity

.this cannot be
said for all communities.”
2.) I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate in the
Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of them was
invited? I wish to hear.
3.) Once you complete the Meta page, I would request you to please
share on this thread. I would encourage you and your team to document as
much as you can about your activities on Meta.
4.) It is already to my understanding that the absence of your
communication manager has led to defaults in your newsletter. I would like
to re-iterate as documented on the other mail thread, Wikimedia Communities
are voluntary driven, some staff should devote time and keep sharing. This
is just a suggestion.
@ Subhashish: Sorry to cross-post a bit from the other thread, I happened
to miss your last message since another message popped in within 10 minutes
and I couldn’t distinguish. I believe putting comments about your personal
experiences at Wikimedia Movements wasn’t the best sportive thing one could
do. Since those were put on a public thread, so, on a public thread, I
would like to *apologize*. I still may remain unconvinced on not having
bandwidth, reports and other issues, but, Yes, I shouldn’t have brought
your personal story.
Also, I advise Odia User Group to be more active in documenting about
such works on their Meta page and Village Pump. Our communities are too big
in nature, they often get sorted into two haves – one who dedicate more
time to the movement and remain known faces amongst each other, two- who
edit but devote less time to activities but they also put their
contributions. There are numerous such silent editors in every community.
Please take this only to be a suggestion, no negative remarks here.
@Satdeep : I was expecting to hear from you. As Tanveer, points out on
having spent roughly Rs 2 lakhs, this is amount is much more than that
spent on to endorse a scholarship to Wikimania. But that’s not my
question, I think we should refrain from that on this thread. You were a
part of the conference were no heeds to transparency and reporting was made
(even the CIS-A2K staff accepts this). Secondly, you hold a chair in AffCom
and also a WMF staff (yes part-time). I am of the opinion that neutrality
has somewhere been disturbed at your end. A personal freindly suggestion.
Abhinav
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 3:11 PM Subhashish Panigrahi <

Post by Subhashish Panigrahi
Thanks Tanveer for this frank clarification.
@Abhinav srivastava <***@gmail.com>, I didn't check earlier that
there is a point concerning me. So just a small clarification - my point
was not to show how A2K organized the event in a non-transparent way but to
share the fact that I was a participant and did not know very well what
went behind organizing the event. Also, I participated in my capacity of a
rep of Odia Wikimedians User Group who happened to live in Bangalore (so it
was logistically cheaper even though we didn't go to WMCON this year). For
the record, Tanveer did share with me about this factor and the second
factor — that our UG will be eligible next year to send a rep — for
inviting me. My participation was not in the capacity of a former employee
of CIS. :)
Subhashish

Post by Tanveer Hasan
Dear Abhinav,
==Conference==
Hello,
Yes, we organised a WMCON India 2018 as per our proposal [1] that was
submitted to the FDC in March 2017.
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?
The delegates were not selected by CIS. Participants invited/selected
by WMF to participate in WMCON 2018 [2] in Berlin were invited to this
meeting. User Group representatives who will be participating in WMCON 2019
(residing in Bangalore) were invited to participate as well.
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your
response to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump,
mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
As the participants were already selected by another affiliate of WMF,
we did not want to reinvent the process and hence sent them personal emails
as invite to this conference. We apologise for not sending out the event
agenda and details about the event on mailing list and village pump of all
the Indic communities.
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?
Our intention was not to be ‘non transparent’, the participant list was
put up by WMDE Conference organising team and we invited only those people
whose name featured in the official participant list. Sunil Abraham,
Executive Director, CIS and Ananth Subray, Program Associate, A2K,
Subhashish Panigrahi, representing Odia User group and Dr. U.B. Pavanaja,
representing Karavali Wikimedians User Group were the only participants who
were present whose name was not on the Participants list.
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not maintaining
transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the question is
NO)?
I would like to reiterate that our intention was not to be
‘non-transparent’. A2K team apologises for not sending out adequate
information to communities and requisite channels of communication. We will
strive to improve our communication with the community for all of our
events.
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?
There is a meta page that had been created but has not been completed.
We will priorotise the reporting of this event and revert with relevant
updates.
(g) How much funds were involved?
We used an approximate amount of INR.2 lakh for this event. Major
expenses were incurred in arranging transport and hospitality.
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff during
the workshop?
Four members of the CIS-A2K team participated in the meeting.
Mr. Sunil Abraham, Executive Director was the chief facilitator on Day 1.
Tanveer Hasan and Tito Dutta were organisers and co-facilitators for
the conversations for both days.
Ananth Subray attended the event to coordinate logistics and
reimbursements.
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly reports
on the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
We have defaulted on our newsletter because of the exit of our
communications officer. All the reports are updated here [3]. We will also
update reports here [4] at the earliest.
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
We will do our best to update reports by the end of this month.
[1].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2017_-_June_2018/Skill_Building_Initiatives#Wikimedia_India_conference_2018
[2].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Participants%27_List
[3]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports
[4]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports
Regards,
ಭಟಚು, ಆಗ 5, 2018 ರಂಊು 07:22 ಪೂರ್ವಟಹ್ಚ ಞಮಯಕ್ಕೆ ರಂಊು Abhinav srivastava <

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Thank You Tito for your mail.
I would request you to address the issues within 10 days from now.
This is just a request.
Also, one of your colleagues and also my friend informed me that he
wanted to reply but his e-mail is being moderated or blacklisted. I have
taken this issue with the mailing list admins and the admins have looked
into the issue clarifying the said collegeue wasn’t moderated or
blacklisted. In case, any issue still arises, please ping me and I will do
my best to settle this.
Thank You for writing back.
Abhinav

Post by Tito Dutta
Hello Abhinav,
On behalf of the team, I confirm that we have received your
questions. Thanks for these questions.
We have a hectic schedule right now because of few things such as CIS
(the main institution's) strategy meet, staff transition, grant report, and
some other works.
Transparency and accountability are very important topics. If things
are not clear for a couple of events, we must work on it.
Some other member or I'll get back with answers in a few days.
(I am cc-ing Sunil Abraham, ED, of the institution, in this email)
Thanks
Tito Dutta
Note: If I don't reply to your email in 2 days, please feel free to
remind me over email or phone call.

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Dear Friends From CIS-A2K,
I am bringing up a discussion based on few of the concerns expressed
on the other mail thread. I would like to acknowledge on record, the past
few years CIS-A2K has reached out to communities (besides Focussed Language
Area) much more effectively. I may be the first person to say this publicly
but I am sure many more would echo my views here.
Now what concerns me and something CIS-A2K already knows, when the
community has started acknowledging your work much more, CIS-A2K has been
acting as the necessary intervention in times of crisis why transparency is
being not paid its due.
I list some of my questions which everyone is already aware of and
would request a reply. I would request you to not break the bullet and
reply each of them separately. Of course! If you are comfortable.
==Conference==
(a) Did CIS-A2K organize a conference/meetup in Bengaluru this summer?
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your
response to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump,
mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not
maintaining transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the
question is NO)?
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?
(g) How much funds were involved?
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff
during the workshop?
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly
reports on the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
@Satdeep: I could not find any Meta page but I do find a page which
is put under-construction and this mentions you. Were you a part of this?
If Yes, I am not able to understand, the entire argument you had posted
yesterday about reporting guidelines and transparency.
Only If, You Were A Party to This.
To Everyone, I understand I may be playing the devil’s role here.
Some of my close aides have already advised me to stay back since I am
damaging my personal reputation.
My argument is simple if my personal image promotes inclusiveness
and transparency. I will be happy to remain a soldier fighting.
Abhinav
_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

_______________________________________________

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_______________________________________________
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_______________________________________________

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--
Netha Hussain
Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
_______________________________________________
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[Ashwin Baindur]

My two bits. Transparency is one issue and its good that some one asked
about it and very good that the CIS is answering the concerns. However, the
tone here appears to be that for every decision about the organisation of a
CIS event, consensus is a must with the community. That is not so. The CIS
A2K project can take decisions about whom to invite as per their decided
line of reasoning.

The line of questioning here seems to be like that of a witch hunt. As one
who has organised many events in a lifetime, let me tell you, organisers
are expected to do their best in all aspects, and be open about it. But it
does not mean that they do things YOUR way or that you get to decide what
is right or wrong.

If some one got left out and you know whom it is say so outright and ask
why that person didn't figure. Don't make insinuations.

Transparency is there. You asked, they answered. Reports are often delayed,
though they shouldn't be as far as possible. I could point out a number of
grants taken by Wikimedians where the reports have not been generated or
they are a slipshod placeholder, where accounts are not submitted for
months or are absolutely unsatisfactory. Where the outcomes promised in
grant proposal are inadequately met or conveniently avoided mention of.

A conference expenditure of Rs 2 Lakhs is not exorbitant and you know that.
Your statement declaiming it so doesn't make it.

I request that such questions and accountability definitely be carried out
but not in the way that is being done here. It reeks of bad faith.

And for sake of Conflict of Interest disclosure let me say that I have been
called twice to CIS as resource person for a staff selection meet some
years ago and for TTT last year. My transportation expenses, food and
hotel stay for TTT was borne by CIS. In the staff selection meet, I stayed
with my brother and ate at his place, CIS only paid from transportation. I
received no remuneration for these two events. I have NOT received any
grant from CIS or WMF in my name ever. Though Sunil did present me a set of
CIS pamphlets the first time I met him.

Those who don't know me, I am a retired army officer, editing since 2006 on
en:WP and my name is User:AshLin.

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Netha,
I had no idea about you neither I am directing at you. This is for other
Wikimedias residing in India.
Sorry for the inconveniences.
Abhinav

Post by Netha Hussain
Dear all,
My response to Abhinav's question, just to clarify about my attendance at
2.) I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate in the
Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of them was
invited? I wish to hear.
I am an Indian Wikimedian and I was selected by the WMF to participate
in Wikimedia Conference 2018. I attended in my capacity as a volunteer and
delivered the Diversity statement and led the diversity discussion
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Documentation/Movement_Strategy_track/Day_2>
there. I was not informed about this Bangalore conference conducted by the
CIS, and I do not expect to be invited because I live in a different
country, and flying me to India would have been very expensive.
Additionally, my role in WMCON 2018 was to talk specifically about
Diversity, which is not exclusively an India-related topic. I did not
represent any affiliate from India, either.
The complete list of participants who attended WMCON 18 can be found here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Participants%27_List>
.
Regards
Netha

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Tanveer and Subhashish,
Thank You, Tanveer for acknowledging, responding, apologizing and most
importantly assuring on transparency.
I still have a few concerns and I wish to write back. I would appreciate
if I can hear back.
1.) Your proposal also mentions on inviting Experienced Indian
Wikimedians. While, as per your response I do not find any Wikimedian
attending in this category. I would like to record a suggestion. Bengaluru
is one of the highly populated cities and also comprising a high number of
migrant populations. In the upcoming events, you can invite Experience
Wikimedians from other languages groups which still do not have a User
Group and are based in Bengaluru. They may not be attending the Wikimedia
Conference in Berlin, they may not be even from your focused languages. The
idea is very similar to the statement put forward by your organization and
Wikimedia India during the Wiki Conference India, “While some communities
have dynamic leaders and enough community level activity

.this cannot be
said for all communities.”
2.) I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate in the
Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of them was
invited? I wish to hear.
3.) Once you complete the Meta page, I would request you to please
share on this thread. I would encourage you and your team to document as
much as you can about your activities on Meta.
4.) It is already to my understanding that the absence of your
communication manager has led to defaults in your newsletter. I would like
to re-iterate as documented on the other mail thread, Wikimedia Communities
are voluntary driven, some staff should devote time and keep sharing. This
is just a suggestion.
@ Subhashish: Sorry to cross-post a bit from the other thread, I
happened to miss your last message since another message popped in within
10 minutes and I couldn’t distinguish. I believe putting comments about
your personal experiences at Wikimedia Movements wasn’t the best sportive
thing one could do. Since those were put on a public thread, so, on a
public thread, I would like to *apologize*. I still may remain
unconvinced on not having bandwidth, reports and other issues, but, Yes, I
shouldn’t have brought your personal story.
Also, I advise Odia User Group to be more active in documenting about
such works on their Meta page and Village Pump. Our communities are too big
in nature, they often get sorted into two haves – one who dedicate more
time to the movement and remain known faces amongst each other, two- who
edit but devote less time to activities but they also put their
contributions. There are numerous such silent editors in every community.
Please take this only to be a suggestion, no negative remarks here.
@Satdeep : I was expecting to hear from you. As Tanveer, points out on
having spent roughly Rs 2 lakhs, this is amount is much more than that
spent on to endorse a scholarship to Wikimania. But that’s not my
question, I think we should refrain from that on this thread. You were a
part of the conference were no heeds to transparency and reporting was made
(even the CIS-A2K staff accepts this). Secondly, you hold a chair in AffCom
and also a WMF staff (yes part-time). I am of the opinion that neutrality
has somewhere been disturbed at your end. A personal freindly suggestion.
Abhinav
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 3:11 PM Subhashish Panigrahi <

Post by Subhashish Panigrahi
Thanks Tanveer for this frank clarification.
@Abhinav srivastava <***@gmail.com>, I didn't check earlier
that there is a point concerning me. So just a small clarification - my
point was not to show how A2K organized the event in a non-transparent way
but to share the fact that I was a participant and did not know very well
what went behind organizing the event. Also, I participated in my capacity
of a rep of Odia Wikimedians User Group who happened to live in Bangalore
(so it was logistically cheaper even though we didn't go to WMCON this
year). For the record, Tanveer did share with me about this factor and the
second factor — that our UG will be eligible next year to send a rep — for
inviting me. My participation was not in the capacity of a former employee
of CIS. :)
Subhashish

Post by Tanveer Hasan
Dear Abhinav,
==Conference==
Hello,
Yes, we organised a WMCON India 2018 as per our proposal [1] that was
submitted to the FDC in March 2017.
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?
The delegates were not selected by CIS. Participants invited/selected
by WMF to participate in WMCON 2018 [2] in Berlin were invited to this
meeting. User Group representatives who will be participating in WMCON 2019
(residing in Bangalore) were invited to participate as well.
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your
response to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump,
mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
As the participants were already selected by another affiliate of WMF,
we did not want to reinvent the process and hence sent them personal emails
as invite to this conference. We apologise for not sending out the event
agenda and details about the event on mailing list and village pump of all
the Indic communities.
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?
Our intention was not to be ‘non transparent’, the participant list
was put up by WMDE Conference organising team and we invited only those
people whose name featured in the official participant list. Sunil Abraham,
Executive Director, CIS and Ananth Subray, Program Associate, A2K,
Subhashish Panigrahi, representing Odia User group and Dr. U.B. Pavanaja,
representing Karavali Wikimedians User Group were the only participants who
were present whose name was not on the Participants list.
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not maintaining
transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the question is
NO)?
I would like to reiterate that our intention was not to be
‘non-transparent’. A2K team apologises for not sending out adequate
information to communities and requisite channels of communication. We will
strive to improve our communication with the community for all of our
events.
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?
There is a meta page that had been created but has not been completed.
We will priorotise the reporting of this event and revert with relevant
updates.
(g) How much funds were involved?
We used an approximate amount of INR.2 lakh for this event. Major
expenses were incurred in arranging transport and hospitality.
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff
during the workshop?
Four members of the CIS-A2K team participated in the meeting.
Mr. Sunil Abraham, Executive Director was the chief facilitator on Day 1.
Tanveer Hasan and Tito Dutta were organisers and co-facilitators for
the conversations for both days.
Ananth Subray attended the event to coordinate logistics and
reimbursements.
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly reports
on the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
We have defaulted on our newsletter because of the exit of our
communications officer. All the reports are updated here [3]. We will also
update reports here [4] at the earliest.
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
We will do our best to update reports by the end of this month.
[1]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_
2017_-_June_2018/Skill_Building_Initiatives#
Wikimedia_India_conference_2018
[2]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_
2018/Participants%27_List
[3]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports
[4]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports
Regards,
ಭಟಚು, ಆಗ 5, 2018 ರಂಊು 07:22 ಪೂರ್ವಟಹ್ಚ ಞಮಯಕ್ಕೆ ರಂಊು Abhinav srivastava <

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Thank You Tito for your mail.
I would request you to address the issues within 10 days from now.
This is just a request.
Also, one of your colleagues and also my friend informed me that he
wanted to reply but his e-mail is being moderated or blacklisted. I have
taken this issue with the mailing list admins and the admins have looked
into the issue clarifying the said collegeue wasn’t moderated or
blacklisted. In case, any issue still arises, please ping me and I will do
my best to settle this.
Thank You for writing back.
Abhinav

Post by Tito Dutta
Hello Abhinav,
On behalf of the team, I confirm that we have received your
questions. Thanks for these questions.
We have a hectic schedule right now because of few things such as
CIS (the main institution's) strategy meet, staff transition, grant report,
and some other works.
Transparency and accountability are very important topics. If
things are not clear for a couple of events, we must work on it.
Some other member or I'll get back with answers in a few days.
(I am cc-ing Sunil Abraham, ED, of the institution, in this email)
Thanks
Tito Dutta
Note: If I don't reply to your email in 2 days, please feel free to
remind me over email or phone call.
On Fri, 3 Aug 2018 at 13:47, Abhinav srivastava <

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Dear Friends From CIS-A2K,
I am bringing up a discussion based on few of the concerns
expressed on the other mail thread. I would like to acknowledge on record,
the past few years CIS-A2K has reached out to communities (besides Focussed
Language Area) much more effectively. I may be the first person to say this
publicly but I am sure many more would echo my views here.
Now what concerns me and something CIS-A2K already knows, when the
community has started acknowledging your work much more, CIS-A2K has been
acting as the necessary intervention in times of crisis why transparency is
being not paid its due.
I list some of my questions which everyone is already aware of and
would request a reply. I would request you to not break the bullet and
reply each of them separately. Of course! If you are comfortable.
==Conference==
(a) Did CIS-A2K organize a conference/meetup in Bengaluru this summer?
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your
response to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump,
mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not
maintaining transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the
question is NO)?
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?
(g) How much funds were involved?
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff
during the workshop?
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly
reports on the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
@Satdeep: I could not find any Meta page but I do find a page which
is put under-construction and this mentions you. Were you a part of this?
If Yes, I am not able to understand, the entire argument you had posted
yesterday about reporting guidelines and transparency.
Only If, You Were A Party to This.
To Everyone, I understand I may be playing the devil’s role here.
Some of my close aides have already advised me to stay back since I am
damaging my personal reputation.
My argument is simple if my personal image promotes inclusiveness
and transparency. I will be happy to remain a soldier fighting.
Abhinav
_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

_______________________________________________

Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
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_______________________________________________

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To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
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--
Netha Hussain
Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
_______________________________________________
Wikimediaindia-l mailing list
To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l

_______________________________________________
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[Subhashish Panigrahi]

Abhinav, I think it's a valid expectation for a public report from any
volunteer in the movement when the donation money is spent. So, please
don't apologize to me. But there are many factors — priorities in life,
time commitment, need for something, and many more that stops one from
being available for post-event documentation.

Maybe the following would help explain. Our user group tries to document a
lot. To put things into a perspective, our recent-most event, the 16th
anniversary of Odia Wikipedia, has a long and detailed documentation in
Odia (https://or.wikipedia.org/s/1bia) - thanks to contributors like
Sangram Keshari Senapati, Bikash Ojha and many others who managed to
document a lot of valuable portions from the discussions. We have recorded
about 50 Gb of interviews and sessions just during this event that we now
have no bandwidth to edit and upload. It will take a few more months for us
to do that. :)

As a new user group, we have also supported neighboring communities like
Santali where we interviewed many of the active and new Wikimedians (almost
50 Gbs of media again) during a workshop that we helped organize with
support from A2K.

These are just a couple of examples of what we intend to do and how things
turn up differently in reality. Trust me, we really want to document
publicly as much as we can and there are genuine factors that slow many of
us down. But point noted - there is always a room for improvement. I
personally assumed that as there is a Etherpad note that Tito and others at
A2K had created during the two-day meeting, sharing that with the community
was enough. We indeed had a discussion and Sailesh who works at A2K and
other colleagues at our user group can share more about the same.

Subhashish

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Netha,
I had no idea about you neither I am directing at you. This is for other
Wikimedias residing in India.
Sorry for the inconveniences.
Abhinav

Post by Netha Hussain
Dear all,
My response to Abhinav's question, just to clarify about my attendance at
2.) I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate in the
Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of them was
invited? I wish to hear.
I am an Indian Wikimedian and I was selected by the WMF to participate
in Wikimedia Conference 2018. I attended in my capacity as a volunteer and
delivered the Diversity statement and led the diversity discussion
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Documentation/Movement_Strategy_track/Day_2>
there. I was not informed about this Bangalore conference conducted by the
CIS, and I do not expect to be invited because I live in a different
country, and flying me to India would have been very expensive.
Additionally, my role in WMCON 2018 was to talk specifically about
Diversity, which is not exclusively an India-related topic. I did not
represent any affiliate from India, either.
The complete list of participants who attended WMCON 18 can be found here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Participants%27_List>
.
Regards
Netha

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Tanveer and Subhashish,
Thank You, Tanveer for acknowledging, responding, apologizing and most
importantly assuring on transparency.
I still have a few concerns and I wish to write back. I would appreciate
if I can hear back.
1.) Your proposal also mentions on inviting Experienced Indian
Wikimedians. While, as per your response I do not find any Wikimedian
attending in this category. I would like to record a suggestion. Bengaluru
is one of the highly populated cities and also comprising a high number of
migrant populations. In the upcoming events, you can invite Experience
Wikimedians from other languages groups which still do not have a User
Group and are based in Bengaluru. They may not be attending the Wikimedia
Conference in Berlin, they may not be even from your focused languages. The
idea is very similar to the statement put forward by your organization and
Wikimedia India during the Wiki Conference India, “While some communities
have dynamic leaders and enough community level activity

.this cannot be
said for all communities.”
2.) I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate in the
Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of them was
invited? I wish to hear.
3.) Once you complete the Meta page, I would request you to please
share on this thread. I would encourage you and your team to document as
much as you can about your activities on Meta.
4.) It is already to my understanding that the absence of your
communication manager has led to defaults in your newsletter. I would like
to re-iterate as documented on the other mail thread, Wikimedia Communities
are voluntary driven, some staff should devote time and keep sharing. This
is just a suggestion.
@ Subhashish: Sorry to cross-post a bit from the other thread, I
happened to miss your last message since another message popped in within
10 minutes and I couldn’t distinguish. I believe putting comments about
your personal experiences at Wikimedia Movements wasn’t the best sportive
thing one could do. Since those were put on a public thread, so, on a
public thread, I would like to *apologize*. I still may remain
unconvinced on not having bandwidth, reports and other issues, but, Yes, I
shouldn’t have brought your personal story.
Also, I advise Odia User Group to be more active in documenting about
such works on their Meta page and Village Pump. Our communities are too big
in nature, they often get sorted into two haves – one who dedicate more
time to the movement and remain known faces amongst each other, two- who
edit but devote less time to activities but they also put their
contributions. There are numerous such silent editors in every community.
Please take this only to be a suggestion, no negative remarks here.
@Satdeep : I was expecting to hear from you. As Tanveer, points out on
having spent roughly Rs 2 lakhs, this is amount is much more than that
spent on to endorse a scholarship to Wikimania. But that’s not my
question, I think we should refrain from that on this thread. You were a
part of the conference were no heeds to transparency and reporting was made
(even the CIS-A2K staff accepts this). Secondly, you hold a chair in AffCom
and also a WMF staff (yes part-time). I am of the opinion that neutrality
has somewhere been disturbed at your end. A personal freindly suggestion.
Abhinav
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 3:11 PM Subhashish Panigrahi <

Post by Subhashish Panigrahi
Thanks Tanveer for this frank clarification.
@Abhinav srivastava <***@gmail.com>, I didn't check earlier
that there is a point concerning me. So just a small clarification - my
point was not to show how A2K organized the event in a non-transparent way
but to share the fact that I was a participant and did not know very well
what went behind organizing the event. Also, I participated in my capacity
of a rep of Odia Wikimedians User Group who happened to live in Bangalore
(so it was logistically cheaper even though we didn't go to WMCON this
year). For the record, Tanveer did share with me about this factor and the
second factor — that our UG will be eligible next year to send a rep — for
inviting me. My participation was not in the capacity of a former employee
of CIS. :)
Subhashish

Post by Tanveer Hasan
Dear Abhinav,
==Conference==
Hello,
Yes, we organised a WMCON India 2018 as per our proposal [1] that was
submitted to the FDC in March 2017.
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?
The delegates were not selected by CIS. Participants invited/selected
by WMF to participate in WMCON 2018 [2] in Berlin were invited to this
meeting. User Group representatives who will be participating in WMCON 2019
(residing in Bangalore) were invited to participate as well.
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your
response to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump,
mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
As the participants were already selected by another affiliate of WMF,
we did not want to reinvent the process and hence sent them personal emails
as invite to this conference. We apologise for not sending out the event
agenda and details about the event on mailing list and village pump of all
the Indic communities.
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?
Our intention was not to be ‘non transparent’, the participant list
was put up by WMDE Conference organising team and we invited only those
people whose name featured in the official participant list. Sunil Abraham,
Executive Director, CIS and Ananth Subray, Program Associate, A2K,
Subhashish Panigrahi, representing Odia User group and Dr. U.B. Pavanaja,
representing Karavali Wikimedians User Group were the only participants who
were present whose name was not on the Participants list.
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not maintaining
transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the question is
NO)?
I would like to reiterate that our intention was not to be
‘non-transparent’. A2K team apologises for not sending out adequate
information to communities and requisite channels of communication. We will
strive to improve our communication with the community for all of our
events.
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?
There is a meta page that had been created but has not been completed.
We will priorotise the reporting of this event and revert with relevant
updates.
(g) How much funds were involved?
We used an approximate amount of INR.2 lakh for this event. Major
expenses were incurred in arranging transport and hospitality.
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff
during the workshop?
Four members of the CIS-A2K team participated in the meeting.
Mr. Sunil Abraham, Executive Director was the chief facilitator on Day 1.
Tanveer Hasan and Tito Dutta were organisers and co-facilitators for
the conversations for both days.
Ananth Subray attended the event to coordinate logistics and
reimbursements.
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly reports
on the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
We have defaulted on our newsletter because of the exit of our
communications officer. All the reports are updated here [3]. We will also
update reports here [4] at the earliest.
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
We will do our best to update reports by the end of this month.
[1].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2017_-_June_2018/Skill_Building_Initiatives#Wikimedia_India_conference_2018
[2].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Participants%27_List
[3]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports
[4]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports
Regards,
ಭಟಚು, ಆಗ 5, 2018 ರಂಊು 07:22 ಪೂರ್ವಟಹ್ಚ ಞಮಯಕ್ಕೆ ರಂಊು Abhinav srivastava <

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Thank You Tito for your mail.
I would request you to address the issues within 10 days from now.
This is just a request.
Also, one of your colleagues and also my friend informed me that he
wanted to reply but his e-mail is being moderated or blacklisted. I have
taken this issue with the mailing list admins and the admins have looked
into the issue clarifying the said collegeue wasn’t moderated or
blacklisted. In case, any issue still arises, please ping me and I will do
my best to settle this.
Thank You for writing back.
Abhinav

Post by Tito Dutta
Hello Abhinav,
On behalf of the team, I confirm that we have received your
questions. Thanks for these questions.
We have a hectic schedule right now because of few things such as
CIS (the main institution's) strategy meet, staff transition, grant report,
and some other works.
Transparency and accountability are very important topics. If
things are not clear for a couple of events, we must work on it.
Some other member or I'll get back with answers in a few days.
(I am cc-ing Sunil Abraham, ED, of the institution, in this email)
Thanks
Tito Dutta
Note: If I don't reply to your email in 2 days, please feel free to
remind me over email or phone call.
On Fri, 3 Aug 2018 at 13:47, Abhinav srivastava <

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Dear Friends From CIS-A2K,
I am bringing up a discussion based on few of the concerns
expressed on the other mail thread. I would like to acknowledge on record,
the past few years CIS-A2K has reached out to communities (besides Focussed
Language Area) much more effectively. I may be the first person to say this
publicly but I am sure many more would echo my views here.
Now what concerns me and something CIS-A2K already knows, when the
community has started acknowledging your work much more, CIS-A2K has been
acting as the necessary intervention in times of crisis why transparency is
being not paid its due.
I list some of my questions which everyone is already aware of and
would request a reply. I would request you to not break the bullet and
reply each of them separately. Of course! If you are comfortable.
==Conference==
(a) Did CIS-A2K organize a conference/meetup in Bengaluru this summer?
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your
response to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump,
mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not
maintaining transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the
question is NO)?
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?
(g) How much funds were involved?
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff
during the workshop?
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly
reports on the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
@Satdeep: I could not find any Meta page but I do find a page which
is put under-construction and this mentions you. Were you a part of this?
If Yes, I am not able to understand, the entire argument you had posted
yesterday about reporting guidelines and transparency.
Only If, You Were A Party to This.
To Everyone, I understand I may be playing the devil’s role here.
Some of my close aides have already advised me to stay back since I am
damaging my personal reputation.
My argument is simple if my personal image promotes inclusiveness
and transparency. I will be happy to remain a soldier fighting.
Abhinav
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Netha Hussain
Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
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[Abhinav srivastava]

Hello Ashwin Sir,



It is a matter of one’s personal privacy. Otherwise, I would have shared
the delegate name immediately. This is similar to sharing Bodisattwa’s talk
about 2016 Wikimania where I shared the relevant link on his personal
email. If anyone is not comfortable then why force and take his name. Yes,
2 lakhs is not the issue but you can see why I had stated so.

Anyways, I would like to say, in future if I ever need a help from say
Bengali, Punjabi, Oriya community; Bodhisattwa, Satdeep, Subhashish would
be the first people to come and offer their support. There is enough good
in the Indian community and at times it does not get reflected on the
mailing list. 😊

Let me tell you, I am working on a GLAM partnership and nobody else but
Satdeep offered me help and support. This happened this Monday itself.

Discussions and Debates are just a part of the community interactions. As
they say, the democratic process is strengthened more only when you
practice it. By practice only we learn, ‘we learn how to be polite’, ‘how
to maintain friendly space’, ‘how to be kind etc’. Anyways, If I have been
rude, I would like to apologize straight away.



@ Subhashish: Thank You For The Positive Message. I am also happy to learn
about activities in your User Group.

Post by Subhashish Panigrahi
Abhinav, I think it's a valid expectation for a public report from any
volunteer in the movement when the donation money is spent. So, please
don't apologize to me. But there are many factors — priorities in life,
time commitment, need for something, and many more that stops one from
being available for post-event documentation.
Maybe the following would help explain. Our user group tries to document a
lot. To put things into a perspective, our recent-most event, the 16th
anniversary of Odia Wikipedia, has a long and detailed documentation in
Odia (https://or.wikipedia.org/s/1bia) - thanks to contributors like
Sangram Keshari Senapati, Bikash Ojha and many others who managed to
document a lot of valuable portions from the discussions. We have recorded
about 50 Gb of interviews and sessions just during this event that we now
have no bandwidth to edit and upload. It will take a few more months for us
to do that. :)
As a new user group, we have also supported neighboring communities like
Santali where we interviewed many of the active and new Wikimedians (almost
50 Gbs of media again) during a workshop that we helped organize with
support from A2K.
These are just a couple of examples of what we intend to do and how things
turn up differently in reality. Trust me, we really want to document
publicly as much as we can and there are genuine factors that slow many of
us down. But point noted - there is always a room for improvement. I
personally assumed that as there is a Etherpad note that Tito and others at
A2K had created during the two-day meeting, sharing that with the community
was enough. We indeed had a discussion and Sailesh who works at A2K and
other colleagues at our user group can share more about the same.
Subhashish

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Netha,
I had no idea about you neither I am directing at you. This is for other
Wikimedias residing in India.
Sorry for the inconveniences.
Abhinav

Post by Netha Hussain
Dear all,
My response to Abhinav's question, just to clarify about my attendance
2.) I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate in the
Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of them was
invited? I wish to hear.
I am an Indian Wikimedian and I was selected by the WMF to participate
in Wikimedia Conference 2018. I attended in my capacity as a volunteer and
delivered the Diversity statement and led the diversity discussion
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Documentation/Movement_Strategy_track/Day_2>
there. I was not informed about this Bangalore conference conducted by the
CIS, and I do not expect to be invited because I live in a different
country, and flying me to India would have been very expensive.
Additionally, my role in WMCON 2018 was to talk specifically about
Diversity, which is not exclusively an India-related topic. I did not
represent any affiliate from India, either.
The complete list of participants who attended WMCON 18 can be found here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Participants%27_List>
.
Regards
Netha

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Tanveer and Subhashish,
Thank You, Tanveer for acknowledging, responding, apologizing and most
importantly assuring on transparency.
I still have a few concerns and I wish to write back. I would
appreciate if I can hear back.
1.) Your proposal also mentions on inviting Experienced Indian
Wikimedians. While, as per your response I do not find any Wikimedian
attending in this category. I would like to record a suggestion. Bengaluru
is one of the highly populated cities and also comprising a high number of
migrant populations. In the upcoming events, you can invite Experience
Wikimedians from other languages groups which still do not have a User
Group and are based in Bengaluru. They may not be attending the Wikimedia
Conference in Berlin, they may not be even from your focused languages. The
idea is very similar to the statement put forward by your organization and
Wikimedia India during the Wiki Conference India, “While some communities
have dynamic leaders and enough community level activity

.this cannot be
said for all communities.”
2.) I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate in
the Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of them
was invited? I wish to hear.
3.) Once you complete the Meta page, I would request you to please
share on this thread. I would encourage you and your team to document as
much as you can about your activities on Meta.
4.) It is already to my understanding that the absence of your
communication manager has led to defaults in your newsletter. I would like
to re-iterate as documented on the other mail thread, Wikimedia Communities
are voluntary driven, some staff should devote time and keep sharing. This
is just a suggestion.
@ Subhashish: Sorry to cross-post a bit from the other thread, I
happened to miss your last message since another message popped in within
10 minutes and I couldn’t distinguish. I believe putting comments about
your personal experiences at Wikimedia Movements wasn’t the best sportive
thing one could do. Since those were put on a public thread, so, on a
public thread, I would like to *apologize*. I still may remain
unconvinced on not having bandwidth, reports and other issues, but, Yes, I
shouldn’t have brought your personal story.
Also, I advise Odia User Group to be more active in documenting about
such works on their Meta page and Village Pump. Our communities are too big
in nature, they often get sorted into two haves – one who dedicate more
time to the movement and remain known faces amongst each other, two- who
edit but devote less time to activities but they also put their
contributions. There are numerous such silent editors in every community.
Please take this only to be a suggestion, no negative remarks here.
@Satdeep : I was expecting to hear from you. As Tanveer, points out on
having spent roughly Rs 2 lakhs, this is amount is much more than that
spent on to endorse a scholarship to Wikimania. But that’s not my
question, I think we should refrain from that on this thread. You were a
part of the conference were no heeds to transparency and reporting was made
(even the CIS-A2K staff accepts this). Secondly, you hold a chair in AffCom
and also a WMF staff (yes part-time). I am of the opinion that neutrality
has somewhere been disturbed at your end. A personal freindly suggestion.
Abhinav
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 3:11 PM Subhashish Panigrahi <

Post by Subhashish Panigrahi
Thanks Tanveer for this frank clarification.
@Abhinav srivastava <***@gmail.com>, I didn't check earlier
that there is a point concerning me. So just a small clarification - my
point was not to show how A2K organized the event in a non-transparent way
but to share the fact that I was a participant and did not know very well
what went behind organizing the event. Also, I participated in my capacity
of a rep of Odia Wikimedians User Group who happened to live in Bangalore
(so it was logistically cheaper even though we didn't go to WMCON this
year). For the record, Tanveer did share with me about this factor and the
second factor — that our UG will be eligible next year to send a rep — for
inviting me. My participation was not in the capacity of a former employee
of CIS. :)
Subhashish
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 2:59 PM Tanveer Hasan <

Post by Tanveer Hasan
Dear Abhinav,
==Conference==
Hello,
Yes, we organised a WMCON India 2018 as per our proposal [1] that was
submitted to the FDC in March 2017.
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?
The delegates were not selected by CIS. Participants invited/selected
by WMF to participate in WMCON 2018 [2] in Berlin were invited to this
meeting. User Group representatives who will be participating in WMCON 2019
(residing in Bangalore) were invited to participate as well.
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your
response to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump,
mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
As the participants were already selected by another affiliate of
WMF, we did not want to reinvent the process and hence sent them personal
emails as invite to this conference. We apologise for not sending out the
event agenda and details about the event on mailing list and village pump
of all the Indic communities.
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?
Our intention was not to be ‘non transparent’, the participant list
was put up by WMDE Conference organising team and we invited only those
people whose name featured in the official participant list. Sunil Abraham,
Executive Director, CIS and Ananth Subray, Program Associate, A2K,
Subhashish Panigrahi, representing Odia User group and Dr. U.B. Pavanaja,
representing Karavali Wikimedians User Group were the only participants who
were present whose name was not on the Participants list.
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not
maintaining transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the
question is NO)?
I would like to reiterate that our intention was not to be
‘non-transparent’. A2K team apologises for not sending out adequate
information to communities and requisite channels of communication. We will
strive to improve our communication with the community for all of our
events.
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?
There is a meta page that had been created but has not been
completed. We will priorotise the reporting of this event and revert with
relevant updates.
(g) How much funds were involved?
We used an approximate amount of INR.2 lakh for this event. Major
expenses were incurred in arranging transport and hospitality.
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff
during the workshop?
Four members of the CIS-A2K team participated in the meeting.
Mr. Sunil Abraham, Executive Director was the chief facilitator on Day 1.
Tanveer Hasan and Tito Dutta were organisers and co-facilitators for
the conversations for both days.
Ananth Subray attended the event to coordinate logistics and
reimbursements.
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly reports
on the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
We have defaulted on our newsletter because of the exit of our
communications officer. All the reports are updated here [3]. We will also
update reports here [4] at the earliest.
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
We will do our best to update reports by the end of this month.
[1].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2017_-_June_2018/Skill_Building_Initiatives#Wikimedia_India_conference_2018
[2].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Participants%27_List
[3]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports
[4]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports
Regards,
ಭಟಚು, ಆಗ 5, 2018 ರಂಊು 07:22 ಪೂರ್ವಟಹ್ಚ ಞಮಯಕ್ಕೆ ರಂಊು Abhinav srivastava

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Thank You Tito for your mail.
I would request you to address the issues within 10 days from now.
This is just a request.
Also, one of your colleagues and also my friend informed me that he
wanted to reply but his e-mail is being moderated or blacklisted. I have
taken this issue with the mailing list admins and the admins have looked
into the issue clarifying the said collegeue wasn’t moderated or
blacklisted. In case, any issue still arises, please ping me and I will do
my best to settle this.
Thank You for writing back.
Abhinav

Post by Tito Dutta
Hello Abhinav,
On behalf of the team, I confirm that we have received your
questions. Thanks for these questions.
We have a hectic schedule right now because of few things such as
CIS (the main institution's) strategy meet, staff transition, grant report,
and some other works.
Transparency and accountability are very important topics. If
things are not clear for a couple of events, we must work on it.
Some other member or I'll get back with answers in a few days.
(I am cc-ing Sunil Abraham, ED, of the institution, in this email)
Thanks
Tito Dutta
Note: If I don't reply to your email in 2 days, please feel free to
remind me over email or phone call.
On Fri, 3 Aug 2018 at 13:47, Abhinav srivastava <

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Dear Friends From CIS-A2K,
I am bringing up a discussion based on few of the concerns
expressed on the other mail thread. I would like to acknowledge on record,
the past few years CIS-A2K has reached out to communities (besides Focussed
Language Area) much more effectively. I may be the first person to say this
publicly but I am sure many more would echo my views here.
Now what concerns me and something CIS-A2K already knows, when the
community has started acknowledging your work much more, CIS-A2K has been
acting as the necessary intervention in times of crisis why transparency is
being not paid its due.
I list some of my questions which everyone is already aware of and
would request a reply. I would request you to not break the bullet and
reply each of them separately. Of course! If you are comfortable.
==Conference==
(a) Did CIS-A2K organize a conference/meetup in Bengaluru this summer?
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your
response to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump,
mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not
maintaining transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the
question is NO)?
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?
(g) How much funds were involved?
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff
during the workshop?
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly
reports on the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
@Satdeep: I could not find any Meta page but I do find a page
which is put under-construction and this mentions you. Were you a part of
this? If Yes, I am not able to understand, the entire argument you had
posted yesterday about reporting guidelines and transparency.
Only If, You Were A Party to This.
To Everyone, I understand I may be playing the devil’s role here.
Some of my close aides have already advised me to stay back since I am
damaging my personal reputation.
My argument is simple if my personal image promotes inclusiveness
and transparency. I will be happy to remain a soldier fighting.
Abhinav
_______________________________________________
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_______________________________________________

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_______________________________________________
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--
Netha Hussain
Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
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[Ashwin Baindur]

Thanks. I was just expressing my concerns.

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Ashwin Sir,
It is a matter of one’s personal privacy. Otherwise, I would have shared
the delegate name immediately. This is similar to sharing Bodisattwa’s talk
about 2016 Wikimania where I shared the relevant link on his personal
email. If anyone is not comfortable then why force and take his name. Yes,
2 lakhs is not the issue but you can see why I had stated so.
Anyways, I would like to say, in future if I ever need a help from say
Bengali, Punjabi, Oriya community; Bodhisattwa, Satdeep, Subhashish would
be the first people to come and offer their support. There is enough good
in the Indian community and at times it does not get reflected on the
mailing list. 😊
Let me tell you, I am working on a GLAM partnership and nobody else but
Satdeep offered me help and support. This happened this Monday itself.
Discussions and Debates are just a part of the community interactions. As
they say, the democratic process is strengthened more only when you
practice it. By practice only we learn, ‘we learn how to be polite’, ‘how
to maintain friendly space’, ‘how to be kind etc’. Anyways, If I have been
rude, I would like to apologize straight away.
@ Subhashish: Thank You For The Positive Message. I am also happy to learn
about activities in your User Group.
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 5:57 PM Subhashish Panigrahi <

Post by Subhashish Panigrahi
Abhinav, I think it's a valid expectation for a public report from any
volunteer in the movement when the donation money is spent. So, please
don't apologize to me. But there are many factors — priorities in life,
time commitment, need for something, and many more that stops one from
being available for post-event documentation.
Maybe the following would help explain. Our user group tries to document
a lot. To put things into a perspective, our recent-most event, the 16th
anniversary of Odia Wikipedia, has a long and detailed documentation in
Odia (https://or.wikipedia.org/s/1bia) - thanks to contributors like
Sangram Keshari Senapati, Bikash Ojha and many others who managed to
document a lot of valuable portions from the discussions. We have recorded
about 50 Gb of interviews and sessions just during this event that we now
have no bandwidth to edit and upload. It will take a few more months for us
to do that. :)
As a new user group, we have also supported neighboring communities like
Santali where we interviewed many of the active and new Wikimedians (almost
50 Gbs of media again) during a workshop that we helped organize with
support from A2K.
These are just a couple of examples of what we intend to do and how
things turn up differently in reality. Trust me, we really want to document
publicly as much as we can and there are genuine factors that slow many of
us down. But point noted - there is always a room for improvement. I
personally assumed that as there is a Etherpad note that Tito and others at
A2K had created during the two-day meeting, sharing that with the community
was enough. We indeed had a discussion and Sailesh who works at A2K and
other colleagues at our user group can share more about the same.
Subhashish

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Netha,
I had no idea about you neither I am directing at you. This is for other
Wikimedias residing in India.
Sorry for the inconveniences.
Abhinav

Post by Netha Hussain
Dear all,
My response to Abhinav's question, just to clarify about my attendance
2.) I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate in
the Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of them
was invited? I wish to hear.
I am an Indian Wikimedian and I was selected by the WMF to participate
in Wikimedia Conference 2018. I attended in my capacity as a volunteer and
delivered the Diversity statement and led the diversity discussion
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Documentation/Movement_Strategy_track/Day_2>
there. I was not informed about this Bangalore conference conducted by the
CIS, and I do not expect to be invited because I live in a different
country, and flying me to India would have been very expensive.
Additionally, my role in WMCON 2018 was to talk specifically about
Diversity, which is not exclusively an India-related topic. I did not
represent any affiliate from India, either.
The complete list of participants who attended WMCON 18 can be found here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Participants%27_List>
.
Regards
Netha

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Tanveer and Subhashish,
Thank You, Tanveer for acknowledging, responding, apologizing and most
importantly assuring on transparency.
I still have a few concerns and I wish to write back. I would
appreciate if I can hear back.
1.) Your proposal also mentions on inviting Experienced Indian
Wikimedians. While, as per your response I do not find any Wikimedian
attending in this category. I would like to record a suggestion. Bengaluru
is one of the highly populated cities and also comprising a high number of
migrant populations. In the upcoming events, you can invite Experience
Wikimedians from other languages groups which still do not have a User
Group and are based in Bengaluru. They may not be attending the Wikimedia
Conference in Berlin, they may not be even from your focused languages. The
idea is very similar to the statement put forward by your organization and
Wikimedia India during the Wiki Conference India, “While some communities
have dynamic leaders and enough community level activity

.this cannot be
said for all communities.”
2.) I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate in
the Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of them
was invited? I wish to hear.
3.) Once you complete the Meta page, I would request you to please
share on this thread. I would encourage you and your team to document as
much as you can about your activities on Meta.
4.) It is already to my understanding that the absence of your
communication manager has led to defaults in your newsletter. I would like
to re-iterate as documented on the other mail thread, Wikimedia Communities
are voluntary driven, some staff should devote time and keep sharing. This
is just a suggestion.
@ Subhashish: Sorry to cross-post a bit from the other thread, I
happened to miss your last message since another message popped in within
10 minutes and I couldn’t distinguish. I believe putting comments about
your personal experiences at Wikimedia Movements wasn’t the best sportive
thing one could do. Since those were put on a public thread, so, on a
public thread, I would like to *apologize*. I still may remain
unconvinced on not having bandwidth, reports and other issues, but, Yes, I
shouldn’t have brought your personal story.
Also, I advise Odia User Group to be more active in documenting about
such works on their Meta page and Village Pump. Our communities are too big
in nature, they often get sorted into two haves – one who dedicate more
time to the movement and remain known faces amongst each other, two- who
edit but devote less time to activities but they also put their
contributions. There are numerous such silent editors in every community.
Please take this only to be a suggestion, no negative remarks here.
@Satdeep : I was expecting to hear from you. As Tanveer, points out on
having spent roughly Rs 2 lakhs, this is amount is much more than that
spent on to endorse a scholarship to Wikimania. But that’s not my
question, I think we should refrain from that on this thread. You were a
part of the conference were no heeds to transparency and reporting was made
(even the CIS-A2K staff accepts this). Secondly, you hold a chair in AffCom
and also a WMF staff (yes part-time). I am of the opinion that neutrality
has somewhere been disturbed at your end. A personal freindly suggestion.
Abhinav
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 3:11 PM Subhashish Panigrahi <

Post by Subhashish Panigrahi
Thanks Tanveer for this frank clarification.
@Abhinav srivastava <***@gmail.com>, I didn't check earlier
that there is a point concerning me. So just a small clarification - my
point was not to show how A2K organized the event in a non-transparent way
but to share the fact that I was a participant and did not know very well
what went behind organizing the event. Also, I participated in my capacity
of a rep of Odia Wikimedians User Group who happened to live in Bangalore
(so it was logistically cheaper even though we didn't go to WMCON this
year). For the record, Tanveer did share with me about this factor and the
second factor — that our UG will be eligible next year to send a rep — for
inviting me. My participation was not in the capacity of a former employee
of CIS. :)
Subhashish
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 2:59 PM Tanveer Hasan <

Post by Tanveer Hasan
Dear Abhinav,
==Conference==
Hello,
Yes, we organised a WMCON India 2018 as per our proposal [1] that
was submitted to the FDC in March 2017.
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?
The delegates were not selected by CIS. Participants
invited/selected by WMF to participate in WMCON 2018 [2] in Berlin were
invited to this meeting. User Group representatives who will be
participating in WMCON 2019 (residing in Bangalore) were invited to
participate as well.
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your
response to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump,
mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
As the participants were already selected by another affiliate of
WMF, we did not want to reinvent the process and hence sent them personal
emails as invite to this conference. We apologise for not sending out the
event agenda and details about the event on mailing list and village pump
of all the Indic communities.
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?
Our intention was not to be ‘non transparent’, the participant list
was put up by WMDE Conference organising team and we invited only those
people whose name featured in the official participant list. Sunil Abraham,
Executive Director, CIS and Ananth Subray, Program Associate, A2K,
Subhashish Panigrahi, representing Odia User group and Dr. U.B. Pavanaja,
representing Karavali Wikimedians User Group were the only participants who
were present whose name was not on the Participants list.
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not
maintaining transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the
question is NO)?
I would like to reiterate that our intention was not to be
‘non-transparent’. A2K team apologises for not sending out adequate
information to communities and requisite channels of communication. We will
strive to improve our communication with the community for all of our
events.
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?
There is a meta page that had been created but has not been
completed. We will priorotise the reporting of this event and revert with
relevant updates.
(g) How much funds were involved?
We used an approximate amount of INR.2 lakh for this event. Major
expenses were incurred in arranging transport and hospitality.
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff
during the workshop?
Four members of the CIS-A2K team participated in the meeting.
Mr. Sunil Abraham, Executive Director was the chief facilitator on Day 1.
Tanveer Hasan and Tito Dutta were organisers and co-facilitators for
the conversations for both days.
Ananth Subray attended the event to coordinate logistics and
reimbursements.
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly
reports on the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
We have defaulted on our newsletter because of the exit of our
communications officer. All the reports are updated here [3]. We will also
update reports here [4] at the earliest.
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
We will do our best to update reports by the end of this month.
[1].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2017_-_June_2018/Skill_Building_Initiatives#Wikimedia_India_conference_2018
[2].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Participants%27_List
[3]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports
[4]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports
Regards,
ಭಟಚು, ಆಗ 5, 2018 ರಂಊು 07:22 ಪೂರ್ವಟಹ್ಚ ಞಮಯಕ್ಕೆ ರಂಊು Abhinav

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Thank You Tito for your mail.
I would request you to address the issues within 10 days from now.
This is just a request.
Also, one of your colleagues and also my friend informed me that he
wanted to reply but his e-mail is being moderated or blacklisted. I have
taken this issue with the mailing list admins and the admins have looked
into the issue clarifying the said collegeue wasn’t moderated or
blacklisted. In case, any issue still arises, please ping me and I will do
my best to settle this.
Thank You for writing back.
Abhinav

Post by Tito Dutta
Hello Abhinav,
On behalf of the team, I confirm that we have received your
questions. Thanks for these questions.
We have a hectic schedule right now because of few things such as
CIS (the main institution's) strategy meet, staff transition, grant report,
and some other works.
Transparency and accountability are very important topics. If
things are not clear for a couple of events, we must work on it.
Some other member or I'll get back with answers in a few days.
(I am cc-ing Sunil Abraham, ED, of the institution, in this email)
Thanks
Tito Dutta
Note: If I don't reply to your email in 2 days, please feel free
to remind me over email or phone call.
On Fri, 3 Aug 2018 at 13:47, Abhinav srivastava <

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Dear Friends From CIS-A2K,
I am bringing up a discussion based on few of the concerns
expressed on the other mail thread. I would like to acknowledge on record,
the past few years CIS-A2K has reached out to communities (besides Focussed
Language Area) much more effectively. I may be the first person to say this
publicly but I am sure many more would echo my views here.
Now what concerns me and something CIS-A2K already knows, when
the community has started acknowledging your work much more, CIS-A2K has
been acting as the necessary intervention in times of crisis why
transparency is being not paid its due.
I list some of my questions which everyone is already aware of
and would request a reply. I would request you to not break the bullet and
reply each of them separately. Of course! If you are comfortable.
==Conference==
(a) Did CIS-A2K organize a conference/meetup in Bengaluru this summer?
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your
response to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump,
mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not
maintaining transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the
question is NO)?
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?
(g) How much funds were involved?
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff
during the workshop?
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly
reports on the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
@Satdeep: I could not find any Meta page but I do find a page
which is put under-construction and this mentions you. Were you a part of
this? If Yes, I am not able to understand, the entire argument you had
posted yesterday about reporting guidelines and transparency.
Only If, You Were A Party to This.
To Everyone, I understand I may be playing the devil’s role here.
Some of my close aides have already advised me to stay back since I am
damaging my personal reputation.
My argument is simple if my personal image promotes inclusiveness
and transparency. I will be happy to remain a soldier fighting.
Abhinav
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--
Netha Hussain
Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
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[Satdeep Gill]

Hi all,

Documentation and Reporting has generally been an issue. As Subha mentioned
about a lot of footage and no bandwidth to upload, it reminds me of WCI2018
where we had 500 GB data and could only work around about a 100 GB of that.

And yes some communities/volunteers have been doing a lot of great
activities but don't publicize it much and nor do they write blogposts
about the same. I believe this is something where we need some support from
each other.

@Abhinav srivastava <***@gmail.com> I believe everyone who was going
to Berlin was invited to attend the event in Bangalore. I do know about one
person not being available during those dates and another one was refused
visa. I might be missing out on something here.

Regarding disturbed neutrality at my end, I just wanted to say that I am
first a volunteer and then a part-employee and in my view my volunteer
activities (which includes my role in AffCom) are very much different from
my role in the New Readers program. I am happy to discuss more about this
in private email.

Regards
Satdeep Gill

Post by Ashwin Baindur
Thanks. I was just expressing my concerns.

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Ashwin Sir,
It is a matter of one’s personal privacy. Otherwise, I would have shared
the delegate name immediately. This is similar to sharing Bodisattwa’s talk
about 2016 Wikimania where I shared the relevant link on his personal
email. If anyone is not comfortable then why force and take his name. Yes,
2 lakhs is not the issue but you can see why I had stated so.
Anyways, I would like to say, in future if I ever need a help from say
Bengali, Punjabi, Oriya community; Bodhisattwa, Satdeep, Subhashish would
be the first people to come and offer their support. There is enough good
in the Indian community and at times it does not get reflected on the
mailing list. 😊
Let me tell you, I am working on a GLAM partnership and nobody else but
Satdeep offered me help and support. This happened this Monday itself.
Discussions and Debates are just a part of the community interactions. As
they say, the democratic process is strengthened more only when you
practice it. By practice only we learn, ‘we learn how to be polite’, ‘how
to maintain friendly space’, ‘how to be kind etc’. Anyways, If I have been
rude, I would like to apologize straight away.
@ Subhashish: Thank You For The Positive Message. I am also happy to
learn about activities in your User Group.
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 5:57 PM Subhashish Panigrahi <

Post by Subhashish Panigrahi
Abhinav, I think it's a valid expectation for a public report from any
volunteer in the movement when the donation money is spent. So, please
don't apologize to me. But there are many factors — priorities in life,
time commitment, need for something, and many more that stops one from
being available for post-event documentation.
Maybe the following would help explain. Our user group tries to document
a lot. To put things into a perspective, our recent-most event, the 16th
anniversary of Odia Wikipedia, has a long and detailed documentation in
Odia (https://or.wikipedia.org/s/1bia) - thanks to contributors like
Sangram Keshari Senapati, Bikash Ojha and many others who managed to
document a lot of valuable portions from the discussions. We have recorded
about 50 Gb of interviews and sessions just during this event that we now
have no bandwidth to edit and upload. It will take a few more months for us
to do that. :)
As a new user group, we have also supported neighboring communities like
Santali where we interviewed many of the active and new Wikimedians (almost
50 Gbs of media again) during a workshop that we helped organize with
support from A2K.
These are just a couple of examples of what we intend to do and how
things turn up differently in reality. Trust me, we really want to document
publicly as much as we can and there are genuine factors that slow many of
us down. But point noted - there is always a room for improvement. I
personally assumed that as there is a Etherpad note that Tito and others at
A2K had created during the two-day meeting, sharing that with the community
was enough. We indeed had a discussion and Sailesh who works at A2K and
other colleagues at our user group can share more about the same.
Subhashish

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Netha,
I had no idea about you neither I am directing at you. This is for
other Wikimedias residing in India.
Sorry for the inconveniences.
Abhinav

Post by Netha Hussain
Dear all,
My response to Abhinav's question, just to clarify about my attendance
2.) I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate in
the Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of them
was invited? I wish to hear.
I am an Indian Wikimedian and I was selected by the WMF to
participate in Wikimedia Conference 2018. I attended in my capacity as a
volunteer and delivered the Diversity statement and led the diversity
discussion
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Documentation/Movement_Strategy_track/Day_2>
there. I was not informed about this Bangalore conference conducted by the
CIS, and I do not expect to be invited because I live in a different
country, and flying me to India would have been very expensive.
Additionally, my role in WMCON 2018 was to talk specifically about
Diversity, which is not exclusively an India-related topic. I did not
represent any affiliate from India, either.
The complete list of participants who attended WMCON 18 can be found here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Participants%27_List>
.
Regards
Netha

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Tanveer and Subhashish,
Thank You, Tanveer for acknowledging, responding, apologizing and
most importantly assuring on transparency.
I still have a few concerns and I wish to write back. I would
appreciate if I can hear back.
1.) Your proposal also mentions on inviting Experienced Indian
Wikimedians. While, as per your response I do not find any Wikimedian
attending in this category. I would like to record a suggestion. Bengaluru
is one of the highly populated cities and also comprising a high number of
migrant populations. In the upcoming events, you can invite Experience
Wikimedians from other languages groups which still do not have a User
Group and are based in Bengaluru. They may not be attending the Wikimedia
Conference in Berlin, they may not be even from your focused languages. The
idea is very similar to the statement put forward by your organization and
Wikimedia India during the Wiki Conference India, “While some communities
have dynamic leaders and enough community level activity

.this cannot be
said for all communities.”
2.) I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate in
the Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of them
was invited? I wish to hear.
3.) Once you complete the Meta page, I would request you to
please share on this thread. I would encourage you and your team to
document as much as you can about your activities on Meta.
4.) It is already to my understanding that the absence of your
communication manager has led to defaults in your newsletter. I would like
to re-iterate as documented on the other mail thread, Wikimedia Communities
are voluntary driven, some staff should devote time and keep sharing. This
is just a suggestion.
@ Subhashish: Sorry to cross-post a bit from the other thread, I
happened to miss your last message since another message popped in within
10 minutes and I couldn’t distinguish. I believe putting comments about
your personal experiences at Wikimedia Movements wasn’t the best sportive
thing one could do. Since those were put on a public thread, so, on a
public thread, I would like to *apologize*. I still may remain
unconvinced on not having bandwidth, reports and other issues, but, Yes, I
shouldn’t have brought your personal story.
Also, I advise Odia User Group to be more active in documenting about
such works on their Meta page and Village Pump. Our communities are too big
in nature, they often get sorted into two haves – one who dedicate more
time to the movement and remain known faces amongst each other, two- who
edit but devote less time to activities but they also put their
contributions. There are numerous such silent editors in every community.
Please take this only to be a suggestion, no negative remarks here.
@Satdeep : I was expecting to hear from you. As Tanveer, points out
on having spent roughly Rs 2 lakhs, this is amount is much more than that
spent on to endorse a scholarship to Wikimania. But that’s not my
question, I think we should refrain from that on this thread. You were a
part of the conference were no heeds to transparency and reporting was made
(even the CIS-A2K staff accepts this). Secondly, you hold a chair in AffCom
and also a WMF staff (yes part-time). I am of the opinion that neutrality
has somewhere been disturbed at your end. A personal freindly suggestion.
Abhinav
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 3:11 PM Subhashish Panigrahi <

Post by Subhashish Panigrahi
Thanks Tanveer for this frank clarification.
@Abhinav srivastava <***@gmail.com>, I didn't check earlier
that there is a point concerning me. So just a small clarification - my
point was not to show how A2K organized the event in a non-transparent way
but to share the fact that I was a participant and did not know very well
what went behind organizing the event. Also, I participated in my capacity
of a rep of Odia Wikimedians User Group who happened to live in Bangalore
(so it was logistically cheaper even though we didn't go to WMCON this
year). For the record, Tanveer did share with me about this factor and the
second factor — that our UG will be eligible next year to send a rep — for
inviting me. My participation was not in the capacity of a former employee
of CIS. :)
Subhashish
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 2:59 PM Tanveer Hasan <

Post by Tanveer Hasan
Dear Abhinav,
==Conference==
Hello,
Yes, we organised a WMCON India 2018 as per our proposal [1] that
was submitted to the FDC in March 2017.
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?
The delegates were not selected by CIS. Participants
invited/selected by WMF to participate in WMCON 2018 [2] in Berlin were
invited to this meeting. User Group representatives who will be
participating in WMCON 2019 (residing in Bangalore) were invited to
participate as well.
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your
response to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump,
mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
As the participants were already selected by another affiliate of
WMF, we did not want to reinvent the process and hence sent them personal
emails as invite to this conference. We apologise for not sending out the
event agenda and details about the event on mailing list and village pump
of all the Indic communities.
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?
Our intention was not to be ‘non transparent’, the participant list
was put up by WMDE Conference organising team and we invited only those
people whose name featured in the official participant list. Sunil Abraham,
Executive Director, CIS and Ananth Subray, Program Associate, A2K,
Subhashish Panigrahi, representing Odia User group and Dr. U.B. Pavanaja,
representing Karavali Wikimedians User Group were the only participants who
were present whose name was not on the Participants list.
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not
maintaining transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the
question is NO)?
I would like to reiterate that our intention was not to be
‘non-transparent’. A2K team apologises for not sending out adequate
information to communities and requisite channels of communication. We will
strive to improve our communication with the community for all of our
events.
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?
There is a meta page that had been created but has not been
completed. We will priorotise the reporting of this event and revert with
relevant updates.
(g) How much funds were involved?
We used an approximate amount of INR.2 lakh for this event. Major
expenses were incurred in arranging transport and hospitality.
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff
during the workshop?
Four members of the CIS-A2K team participated in the meeting.
Mr. Sunil Abraham, Executive Director was the chief facilitator on Day 1.
Tanveer Hasan and Tito Dutta were organisers and co-facilitators
for the conversations for both days.
Ananth Subray attended the event to coordinate logistics and
reimbursements.
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly
reports on the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
We have defaulted on our newsletter because of the exit of our
communications officer. All the reports are updated here [3]. We will also
update reports here [4] at the earliest.
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
We will do our best to update reports by the end of this month.
[1].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2017_-_June_2018/Skill_Building_Initiatives#Wikimedia_India_conference_2018
[2].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Participants%27_List
[3]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports
[4]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports
Regards,
ಭಟಚು, ಆಗ 5, 2018 ರಂಊು 07:22 ಪೂರ್ವಟಹ್ಚ ಞಮಯಕ್ಕೆ ರಂಊು Abhinav

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Thank You Tito for your mail.
I would request you to address the issues within 10 days from now.
This is just a request.
Also, one of your colleagues and also my friend informed me that
he wanted to reply but his e-mail is being moderated or blacklisted. I have
taken this issue with the mailing list admins and the admins have looked
into the issue clarifying the said collegeue wasn’t moderated or
blacklisted. In case, any issue still arises, please ping me and I will do
my best to settle this.
Thank You for writing back.
Abhinav

Post by Tito Dutta
Hello Abhinav,
On behalf of the team, I confirm that we have received your
questions. Thanks for these questions.
We have a hectic schedule right now because of few things such as
CIS (the main institution's) strategy meet, staff transition, grant report,
and some other works.
Transparency and accountability are very important topics. If
things are not clear for a couple of events, we must work on it.
Some other member or I'll get back with answers in a few days.
(I am cc-ing Sunil Abraham, ED, of the institution, in this email)
Thanks
Tito Dutta
Note: If I don't reply to your email in 2 days, please feel free
to remind me over email or phone call.
On Fri, 3 Aug 2018 at 13:47, Abhinav srivastava <

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Dear Friends From CIS-A2K,
I am bringing up a discussion based on few of the concerns
expressed on the other mail thread. I would like to acknowledge on record,
the past few years CIS-A2K has reached out to communities (besides Focussed
Language Area) much more effectively. I may be the first person to say this
publicly but I am sure many more would echo my views here.
Now what concerns me and something CIS-A2K already knows, when
the community has started acknowledging your work much more, CIS-A2K has
been acting as the necessary intervention in times of crisis why
transparency is being not paid its due.
I list some of my questions which everyone is already aware of
and would request a reply. I would request you to not break the bullet and
reply each of them separately. Of course! If you are comfortable.
==Conference==
(a) Did CIS-A2K organize a conference/meetup in Bengaluru
this summer?
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities
were invited?
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on
your response to part b) was an official notification sent via village
pump, mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the
process?
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not
maintaining transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the
question is NO)?
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the
community?
(g) How much funds were involved?
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff
during the workshop?
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly
reports on the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
@Satdeep: I could not find any Meta page but I do find a page
which is put under-construction and this mentions you. Were you a part of
this? If Yes, I am not able to understand, the entire argument you had
posted yesterday about reporting guidelines and transparency.
Only If, You Were A Party to This.
To Everyone, I understand I may be playing the devil’s role
here. Some of my close aides have already advised me to stay back since I
am damaging my personal reputation.
My argument is simple if my personal image promotes
inclusiveness and transparency. I will be happy to remain a soldier
fighting.
Abhinav
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[Abhinav srivastava]

Those are two different issues of reporting, Satdeep. Anyways, I think that
matter has been sorted for now.

Sure, that would be a good way. We can discuss about conflicts in private
mail.

Abhinav

Post by Satdeep Gill
Hi all,
Documentation and Reporting has generally been an issue. As Subha
mentioned about a lot of footage and no bandwidth to upload, it reminds me
of WCI2018 where we had 500 GB data and could only work around about a 100
GB of that.
And yes some communities/volunteers have been doing a lot of great
activities but don't publicize it much and nor do they write blogposts
about the same. I believe this is something where we need some support from
each other.
@Abhinav srivastava <***@gmail.com> I believe everyone who was
going to Berlin was invited to attend the event in Bangalore. I do know
about one person not being available during those dates and another one was
refused visa. I might be missing out on something here.
Regarding disturbed neutrality at my end, I just wanted to say that I am
first a volunteer and then a part-employee and in my view my volunteer
activities (which includes my role in AffCom) are very much different from
my role in the New Readers program. I am happy to discuss more about this
in private email.
Regards
Satdeep Gill

Post by Ashwin Baindur
Thanks. I was just expressing my concerns.

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Ashwin Sir,
It is a matter of one’s personal privacy. Otherwise, I would have shared
the delegate name immediately. This is similar to sharing Bodisattwa’s talk
about 2016 Wikimania where I shared the relevant link on his personal
email. If anyone is not comfortable then why force and take his name. Yes,
2 lakhs is not the issue but you can see why I had stated so.
Anyways, I would like to say, in future if I ever need a help from say
Bengali, Punjabi, Oriya community; Bodhisattwa, Satdeep, Subhashish would
be the first people to come and offer their support. There is enough good
in the Indian community and at times it does not get reflected on the
mailing list. 😊
Let me tell you, I am working on a GLAM partnership and nobody else but
Satdeep offered me help and support. This happened this Monday itself.
Discussions and Debates are just a part of the community interactions.
As they say, the democratic process is strengthened more only when you
practice it. By practice only we learn, ‘we learn how to be polite’, ‘how
to maintain friendly space’, ‘how to be kind etc’. Anyways, If I have been
rude, I would like to apologize straight away.
@ Subhashish: Thank You For The Positive Message. I am also happy to
learn about activities in your User Group.
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 5:57 PM Subhashish Panigrahi <

Post by Subhashish Panigrahi
Abhinav, I think it's a valid expectation for a public report from any
volunteer in the movement when the donation money is spent. So, please
don't apologize to me. But there are many factors — priorities in life,
time commitment, need for something, and many more that stops one from
being available for post-event documentation.
Maybe the following would help explain. Our user group tries to
document a lot. To put things into a perspective, our recent-most event,
the 16th anniversary of Odia Wikipedia, has a long and detailed
documentation in Odia (https://or.wikipedia.org/s/1bia) - thanks to
contributors like Sangram Keshari Senapati, Bikash Ojha and many others who
managed to document a lot of valuable portions from the discussions. We
have recorded about 50 Gb of interviews and sessions just during this event
that we now have no bandwidth to edit and upload. It will take a few more
months for us to do that. :)
As a new user group, we have also supported neighboring communities
like Santali where we interviewed many of the active and new Wikimedians
(almost 50 Gbs of media again) during a workshop that we helped organize
with support from A2K.
These are just a couple of examples of what we intend to do and how
things turn up differently in reality. Trust me, we really want to document
publicly as much as we can and there are genuine factors that slow many of
us down. But point noted - there is always a room for improvement. I
personally assumed that as there is a Etherpad note that Tito and others at
A2K had created during the two-day meeting, sharing that with the community
was enough. We indeed had a discussion and Sailesh who works at A2K and
other colleagues at our user group can share more about the same.
Subhashish
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 5:20 PM Abhinav srivastava <

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Netha,
I had no idea about you neither I am directing at you. This is for
other Wikimedias residing in India.
Sorry for the inconveniences.
Abhinav

Post by Netha Hussain
Dear all,
My response to Abhinav's question, just to clarify about my
2.) I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate in
the Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of them
was invited? I wish to hear.
I am an Indian Wikimedian and I was selected by the WMF to
participate in Wikimedia Conference 2018. I attended in my capacity as a
volunteer and delivered the Diversity statement and led the
diversity discussion
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Documentation/Movement_Strategy_track/Day_2>
there. I was not informed about this Bangalore conference conducted by the
CIS, and I do not expect to be invited because I live in a different
country, and flying me to India would have been very expensive.
Additionally, my role in WMCON 2018 was to talk specifically about
Diversity, which is not exclusively an India-related topic. I did not
represent any affiliate from India, either.
The complete list of participants who attended WMCON 18 can be found here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Participants%27_List>
.
Regards
Netha
On Fri, 10 Aug 2018 at 13:28, Abhinav srivastava <

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Tanveer and Subhashish,
Thank You, Tanveer for acknowledging, responding, apologizing and
most importantly assuring on transparency.
I still have a few concerns and I wish to write back. I would
appreciate if I can hear back.
1.) Your proposal also mentions on inviting Experienced Indian
Wikimedians. While, as per your response I do not find any Wikimedian
attending in this category. I would like to record a suggestion. Bengaluru
is one of the highly populated cities and also comprising a high number of
migrant populations. In the upcoming events, you can invite Experience
Wikimedians from other languages groups which still do not have a User
Group and are based in Bengaluru. They may not be attending the Wikimedia
Conference in Berlin, they may not be even from your focused languages. The
idea is very similar to the statement put forward by your organization and
Wikimedia India during the Wiki Conference India, “While some communities
have dynamic leaders and enough community level activity

.this cannot be
said for all communities.”
2.) I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate in
the Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of them
was invited? I wish to hear.
3.) Once you complete the Meta page, I would request you to
please share on this thread. I would encourage you and your team to
document as much as you can about your activities on Meta.
4.) It is already to my understanding that the absence of your
communication manager has led to defaults in your newsletter. I would like
to re-iterate as documented on the other mail thread, Wikimedia Communities
are voluntary driven, some staff should devote time and keep sharing. This
is just a suggestion.
@ Subhashish: Sorry to cross-post a bit from the other thread, I
happened to miss your last message since another message popped in within
10 minutes and I couldn’t distinguish. I believe putting comments about
your personal experiences at Wikimedia Movements wasn’t the best sportive
thing one could do. Since those were put on a public thread, so, on a
public thread, I would like to *apologize*. I still may remain
unconvinced on not having bandwidth, reports and other issues, but, Yes, I
shouldn’t have brought your personal story.
Also, I advise Odia User Group to be more active in documenting
about such works on their Meta page and Village Pump. Our communities are
too big in nature, they often get sorted into two haves – one who dedicate
more time to the movement and remain known faces amongst each other, two-
who edit but devote less time to activities but they also put their
contributions. There are numerous such silent editors in every community.
Please take this only to be a suggestion, no negative remarks here.
@Satdeep : I was expecting to hear from you. As Tanveer, points out
on having spent roughly Rs 2 lakhs, this is amount is much more than that
spent on to endorse a scholarship to Wikimania. But that’s not my
question, I think we should refrain from that on this thread. You were a
part of the conference were no heeds to transparency and reporting was made
(even the CIS-A2K staff accepts this). Secondly, you hold a chair in AffCom
and also a WMF staff (yes part-time). I am of the opinion that neutrality
has somewhere been disturbed at your end. A personal freindly suggestion.
Abhinav
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 3:11 PM Subhashish Panigrahi <

Post by Subhashish Panigrahi
Thanks Tanveer for this frank clarification.
@Abhinav srivastava <***@gmail.com>, I didn't check earlier
that there is a point concerning me. So just a small clarification - my
point was not to show how A2K organized the event in a non-transparent way
but to share the fact that I was a participant and did not know very well
what went behind organizing the event. Also, I participated in my capacity
of a rep of Odia Wikimedians User Group who happened to live in Bangalore
(so it was logistically cheaper even though we didn't go to WMCON this
year). For the record, Tanveer did share with me about this factor and the
second factor — that our UG will be eligible next year to send a rep — for
inviting me. My participation was not in the capacity of a former employee
of CIS. :)
Subhashish
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 2:59 PM Tanveer Hasan <

Post by Tanveer Hasan
Dear Abhinav,
==Conference==
Hello,
Yes, we organised a WMCON India 2018 as per our proposal [1] that
was submitted to the FDC in March 2017.
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?
The delegates were not selected by CIS. Participants
invited/selected by WMF to participate in WMCON 2018 [2] in Berlin were
invited to this meeting. User Group representatives who will be
participating in WMCON 2019 (residing in Bangalore) were invited to
participate as well.
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your
response to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump,
mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
As the participants were already selected by another affiliate of
WMF, we did not want to reinvent the process and hence sent them personal
emails as invite to this conference. We apologise for not sending out the
event agenda and details about the event on mailing list and village pump
of all the Indic communities.
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?
Our intention was not to be ‘non transparent’, the participant
list was put up by WMDE Conference organising team and we invited only
those people whose name featured in the official participant list. Sunil
Abraham, Executive Director, CIS and Ananth Subray, Program Associate, A2K,
Subhashish Panigrahi, representing Odia User group and Dr. U.B. Pavanaja,
representing Karavali Wikimedians User Group were the only participants who
were present whose name was not on the Participants list.
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not
maintaining transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the
question is NO)?
I would like to reiterate that our intention was not to be
‘non-transparent’. A2K team apologises for not sending out adequate
information to communities and requisite channels of communication. We will
strive to improve our communication with the community for all of our
events.
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?
There is a meta page that had been created but has not been
completed. We will priorotise the reporting of this event and revert with
relevant updates.
(g) How much funds were involved?
We used an approximate amount of INR.2 lakh for this event. Major
expenses were incurred in arranging transport and hospitality.
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff
during the workshop?
Four members of the CIS-A2K team participated in the meeting.
Mr. Sunil Abraham, Executive Director was the chief facilitator on Day 1.
Tanveer Hasan and Tito Dutta were organisers and co-facilitators
for the conversations for both days.
Ananth Subray attended the event to coordinate logistics and
reimbursements.
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly
reports on the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
We have defaulted on our newsletter because of the exit of our
communications officer. All the reports are updated here [3]. We will also
update reports here [4] at the earliest.
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
We will do our best to update reports by the end of this month.
[1].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2017_-_June_2018/Skill_Building_Initiatives#Wikimedia_India_conference_2018
[2].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Participants%27_List
[3]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports
[4]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports
Regards,
ಭಟಚು, ಆಗ 5, 2018 ರಂಊು 07:22 ಪೂರ್ವಟಹ್ಚ ಞಮಯಕ್ಕೆ ರಂಊು Abhinav

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Thank You Tito for your mail.
I would request you to address the issues within 10 days from
now. This is just a request.
Also, one of your colleagues and also my friend informed me that
he wanted to reply but his e-mail is being moderated or blacklisted. I have
taken this issue with the mailing list admins and the admins have looked
into the issue clarifying the said collegeue wasn’t moderated or
blacklisted. In case, any issue still arises, please ping me and I will do
my best to settle this.
Thank You for writing back.
Abhinav

Post by Tito Dutta
Hello Abhinav,
On behalf of the team, I confirm that we have received your
questions. Thanks for these questions.
We have a hectic schedule right now because of few things such
as CIS (the main institution's) strategy meet, staff transition, grant
report, and some other works.
Transparency and accountability are very important topics. If
things are not clear for a couple of events, we must work on it.
Some other member or I'll get back with answers in a few days.
(I am cc-ing Sunil Abraham, ED, of the institution, in this email)
Thanks
Tito Dutta
Note: If I don't reply to your email in 2 days, please feel free
to remind me over email or phone call.
On Fri, 3 Aug 2018 at 13:47, Abhinav srivastava <

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Dear Friends From CIS-A2K,
I am bringing up a discussion based on few of the concerns
expressed on the other mail thread. I would like to acknowledge on record,
the past few years CIS-A2K has reached out to communities (besides Focussed
Language Area) much more effectively. I may be the first person to say this
publicly but I am sure many more would echo my views here.
Now what concerns me and something CIS-A2K already knows, when
the community has started acknowledging your work much more, CIS-A2K has
been acting as the necessary intervention in times of crisis why
transparency is being not paid its due.
I list some of my questions which everyone is already aware of
and would request a reply. I would request you to not break the bullet and
reply each of them separately. Of course! If you are comfortable.
==Conference==
(a) Did CIS-A2K organize a conference/meetup in Bengaluru
this summer?
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities
were invited?
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on
your response to part b) was an official notification sent via village
pump, mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in
the process?
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not
maintaining transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the
question is NO)?
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the
community?
(g) How much funds were involved?
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K
staff during the workshop?
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly
reports on the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
@Satdeep: I could not find any Meta page but I do find a page
which is put under-construction and this mentions you. Were you a part of
this? If Yes, I am not able to understand, the entire argument you had
posted yesterday about reporting guidelines and transparency.
Only If, You Were A Party to This.
To Everyone, I understand I may be playing the devil’s role
here. Some of my close aides have already advised me to stay back since I
am damaging my personal reputation.
My argument is simple if my personal image promotes
inclusiveness and transparency. I will be happy to remain a soldier
fighting.
Abhinav
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Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
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[Abhinav srivastava]

Hello Tanveer

This is just a friendly reminder that you are supposed to reply on this
thread. It has been more than 1 month now since I floated my concerns.
Although you are no longer a part of the Access to Knowledge Team and now a
staff with Wikimedia Foundation, I understand you are still part of the
movement and could answer for your previous office. I am copying this on
your Wikimedia Foundation Mail Id as well.

The silence has been a cause of personal trouble for me. I have been
subject to personal humiliation such as, 'witch hunt' on this thread.

As claimed by you that best efforts would be undertaken to provide reports
by the end of August, hasn't happened. We are now in the 37th week of the
year. The clarity on how the public money is being spent by CIS-A2K still
remains unclear.

Abhinav

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Those are two different issues of reporting, Satdeep. Anyways, I think
that matter has been sorted for now.
Sure, that would be a good way. We can discuss about conflicts in private
mail.
Abhinav

Post by Satdeep Gill
Hi all,
Documentation and Reporting has generally been an issue. As Subha
mentioned about a lot of footage and no bandwidth to upload, it reminds me
of WCI2018 where we had 500 GB data and could only work around about a 100
GB of that.
And yes some communities/volunteers have been doing a lot of great
activities but don't publicize it much and nor do they write blogposts
about the same. I believe this is something where we need some support from
each other.
@Abhinav srivastava <***@gmail.com> I believe everyone who was
going to Berlin was invited to attend the event in Bangalore. I do know
about one person not being available during those dates and another one was
refused visa. I might be missing out on something here.
Regarding disturbed neutrality at my end, I just wanted to say that I am
first a volunteer and then a part-employee and in my view my volunteer
activities (which includes my role in AffCom) are very much different from
my role in the New Readers program. I am happy to discuss more about this
in private email.
Regards
Satdeep Gill

Post by Ashwin Baindur
Thanks. I was just expressing my concerns.

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Ashwin Sir,
It is a matter of one’s personal privacy. Otherwise, I would have
shared the delegate name immediately. This is similar to sharing
Bodisattwa’s talk about 2016 Wikimania where I shared the relevant link on
his personal email. If anyone is not comfortable then why force and take
his name. Yes, 2 lakhs is not the issue but you can see why I had stated so.
Anyways, I would like to say, in future if I ever need a help from say
Bengali, Punjabi, Oriya community; Bodhisattwa, Satdeep, Subhashish would
be the first people to come and offer their support. There is enough good
in the Indian community and at times it does not get reflected on the
mailing list. 😊
Let me tell you, I am working on a GLAM partnership and nobody else but
Satdeep offered me help and support. This happened this Monday itself.
Discussions and Debates are just a part of the community interactions.
As they say, the democratic process is strengthened more only when you
practice it. By practice only we learn, ‘we learn how to be polite’, ‘how
to maintain friendly space’, ‘how to be kind etc’. Anyways, If I have been
rude, I would like to apologize straight away.
@ Subhashish: Thank You For The Positive Message. I am also happy to
learn about activities in your User Group.
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 5:57 PM Subhashish Panigrahi <

Post by Subhashish Panigrahi
Abhinav, I think it's a valid expectation for a public report from any
volunteer in the movement when the donation money is spent. So, please
don't apologize to me. But there are many factors — priorities in life,
time commitment, need for something, and many more that stops one from
being available for post-event documentation.
Maybe the following would help explain. Our user group tries to
document a lot. To put things into a perspective, our recent-most event,
the 16th anniversary of Odia Wikipedia, has a long and detailed
documentation in Odia (https://or.wikipedia.org/s/1bia) - thanks to
contributors like Sangram Keshari Senapati, Bikash Ojha and many others who
managed to document a lot of valuable portions from the discussions. We
have recorded about 50 Gb of interviews and sessions just during this event
that we now have no bandwidth to edit and upload. It will take a few more
months for us to do that. :)
As a new user group, we have also supported neighboring communities
like Santali where we interviewed many of the active and new Wikimedians
(almost 50 Gbs of media again) during a workshop that we helped organize
with support from A2K.
These are just a couple of examples of what we intend to do and how
things turn up differently in reality. Trust me, we really want to document
publicly as much as we can and there are genuine factors that slow many of
us down. But point noted - there is always a room for improvement. I
personally assumed that as there is a Etherpad note that Tito and others at
A2K had created during the two-day meeting, sharing that with the community
was enough. We indeed had a discussion and Sailesh who works at A2K and
other colleagues at our user group can share more about the same.
Subhashish
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 5:20 PM Abhinav srivastava <

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Netha,
I had no idea about you neither I am directing at you. This is for
other Wikimedias residing in India.
Sorry for the inconveniences.
Abhinav

Post by Netha Hussain
Dear all,
My response to Abhinav's question, just to clarify about my
2.) I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate in
the Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of them
was invited? I wish to hear.
I am an Indian Wikimedian and I was selected by the WMF to
participate in Wikimedia Conference 2018. I attended in my capacity as a
volunteer and delivered the Diversity statement and led the
diversity discussion
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Documentation/Movement_Strategy_track/Day_2>
there. I was not informed about this Bangalore conference conducted by the
CIS, and I do not expect to be invited because I live in a different
country, and flying me to India would have been very expensive.
Additionally, my role in WMCON 2018 was to talk specifically about
Diversity, which is not exclusively an India-related topic. I did not
represent any affiliate from India, either.
The complete list of participants who attended WMCON 18 can be found here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Participants%27_List>
.
Regards
Netha
On Fri, 10 Aug 2018 at 13:28, Abhinav srivastava <

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Tanveer and Subhashish,
Thank You, Tanveer for acknowledging, responding, apologizing and
most importantly assuring on transparency.
I still have a few concerns and I wish to write back. I would
appreciate if I can hear back.
1.) Your proposal also mentions on inviting Experienced Indian
Wikimedians. While, as per your response I do not find any Wikimedian
attending in this category. I would like to record a suggestion. Bengaluru
is one of the highly populated cities and also comprising a high number of
migrant populations. In the upcoming events, you can invite Experience
Wikimedians from other languages groups which still do not have a User
Group and are based in Bengaluru. They may not be attending the Wikimedia
Conference in Berlin, they may not be even from your focused languages. The
idea is very similar to the statement put forward by your organization and
Wikimedia India during the Wiki Conference India, “While some communities
have dynamic leaders and enough community level activity

.this cannot be
said for all communities.”
2.) I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate
in the Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of
them was invited? I wish to hear.
3.) Once you complete the Meta page, I would request you to
please share on this thread. I would encourage you and your team to
document as much as you can about your activities on Meta.
4.) It is already to my understanding that the absence of your
communication manager has led to defaults in your newsletter. I would like
to re-iterate as documented on the other mail thread, Wikimedia Communities
are voluntary driven, some staff should devote time and keep sharing. This
is just a suggestion.
@ Subhashish: Sorry to cross-post a bit from the other thread, I
happened to miss your last message since another message popped in within
10 minutes and I couldn’t distinguish. I believe putting comments about
your personal experiences at Wikimedia Movements wasn’t the best sportive
thing one could do. Since those were put on a public thread, so, on a
public thread, I would like to *apologize*. I still may remain
unconvinced on not having bandwidth, reports and other issues, but, Yes, I
shouldn’t have brought your personal story.
Also, I advise Odia User Group to be more active in documenting
about such works on their Meta page and Village Pump. Our communities are
too big in nature, they often get sorted into two haves – one who dedicate
more time to the movement and remain known faces amongst each other, two-
who edit but devote less time to activities but they also put their
contributions. There are numerous such silent editors in every community.
Please take this only to be a suggestion, no negative remarks here.
@Satdeep : I was expecting to hear from you. As Tanveer, points out
on having spent roughly Rs 2 lakhs, this is amount is much more than that
spent on to endorse a scholarship to Wikimania. But that’s not my
question, I think we should refrain from that on this thread. You were a
part of the conference were no heeds to transparency and reporting was made
(even the CIS-A2K staff accepts this). Secondly, you hold a chair in AffCom
and also a WMF staff (yes part-time). I am of the opinion that neutrality
has somewhere been disturbed at your end. A personal freindly suggestion.
Abhinav
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 3:11 PM Subhashish Panigrahi <

Post by Subhashish Panigrahi
Thanks Tanveer for this frank clarification.
@Abhinav srivastava <***@gmail.com>, I didn't check
earlier that there is a point concerning me. So just a small clarification
- my point was not to show how A2K organized the event in a non-transparent
way but to share the fact that I was a participant and did not know very
well what went behind organizing the event. Also, I participated in my
capacity of a rep of Odia Wikimedians User Group who happened to live in
Bangalore (so it was logistically cheaper even though we didn't go to WMCON
this year). For the record, Tanveer did share with me about this factor and
the second factor — that our UG will be eligible next year to send a rep —
for inviting me. My participation was not in the capacity of a former
employee of CIS. :)
Subhashish
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 2:59 PM Tanveer Hasan <

Post by Tanveer Hasan
Dear Abhinav,
==Conference==
Hello,
(a) Did CIS-A2K organize a conference/meetup in Bengaluru
Yes, we organised a WMCON India 2018 as per our proposal [1] that
was submitted to the FDC in March 2017.
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?
The delegates were not selected by CIS. Participants
invited/selected by WMF to participate in WMCON 2018 [2] in Berlin were
invited to this meeting. User Group representatives who will be
participating in WMCON 2019 (residing in Bangalore) were invited to
participate as well.
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your
response to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump,
mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
As the participants were already selected by another affiliate of
WMF, we did not want to reinvent the process and hence sent them personal
emails as invite to this conference. We apologise for not sending out the
event agenda and details about the event on mailing list and village pump
of all the Indic communities.
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?
Our intention was not to be ‘non transparent’, the participant
list was put up by WMDE Conference organising team and we invited only
those people whose name featured in the official participant list. Sunil
Abraham, Executive Director, CIS and Ananth Subray, Program Associate, A2K,
Subhashish Panigrahi, representing Odia User group and Dr. U.B. Pavanaja,
representing Karavali Wikimedians User Group were the only participants who
were present whose name was not on the Participants list.
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not
maintaining transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the
question is NO)?
I would like to reiterate that our intention was not to be
‘non-transparent’. A2K team apologises for not sending out adequate
information to communities and requisite channels of communication. We will
strive to improve our communication with the community for all of our
events.
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?
There is a meta page that had been created but has not been
completed. We will priorotise the reporting of this event and revert with
relevant updates.
(g) How much funds were involved?
We used an approximate amount of INR.2 lakh for this event. Major
expenses were incurred in arranging transport and hospitality.
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff
during the workshop?
Four members of the CIS-A2K team participated in the meeting.
Mr. Sunil Abraham, Executive Director was the chief facilitator on Day 1.
Tanveer Hasan and Tito Dutta were organisers and co-facilitators
for the conversations for both days.
Ananth Subray attended the event to coordinate logistics and
reimbursements.
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly
reports on the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
We have defaulted on our newsletter because of the exit of our
communications officer. All the reports are updated here [3]. We will also
update reports here [4] at the earliest.
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
We will do our best to update reports by the end of this month.
[1].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2017_-_June_2018/Skill_Building_Initiatives#Wikimedia_India_conference_2018
[2].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Participants%27_List
[3]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports
[4]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports
Regards,
ಭಟಚು, ಆಗ 5, 2018 ರಂಊು 07:22 ಪೂರ್ವಟಹ್ಚ ಞಮಯಕ್ಕೆ ರಂಊು Abhinav

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Thank You Tito for your mail.
I would request you to address the issues within 10 days from
now. This is just a request.
Also, one of your colleagues and also my friend informed me that
he wanted to reply but his e-mail is being moderated or blacklisted. I have
taken this issue with the mailing list admins and the admins have looked
into the issue clarifying the said collegeue wasn’t moderated or
blacklisted. In case, any issue still arises, please ping me and I will do
my best to settle this.
Thank You for writing back.
Abhinav

Post by Tito Dutta
Hello Abhinav,
On behalf of the team, I confirm that we have received your
questions. Thanks for these questions.
We have a hectic schedule right now because of few things such
as CIS (the main institution's) strategy meet, staff transition, grant
report, and some other works.
Transparency and accountability are very important topics. If
things are not clear for a couple of events, we must work on it.
Some other member or I'll get back with answers in a few days.
(I am cc-ing Sunil Abraham, ED, of the institution, in this email)
Thanks
Tito Dutta
Note: If I don't reply to your email in 2 days, please feel
free to remind me over email or phone call.
On Fri, 3 Aug 2018 at 13:47, Abhinav srivastava <

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Dear Friends From CIS-A2K,
I am bringing up a discussion based on few of the concerns
expressed on the other mail thread. I would like to acknowledge on record,
the past few years CIS-A2K has reached out to communities (besides Focussed
Language Area) much more effectively. I may be the first person to say this
publicly but I am sure many more would echo my views here.
Now what concerns me and something CIS-A2K already knows, when
the community has started acknowledging your work much more, CIS-A2K has
been acting as the necessary intervention in times of crisis why
transparency is being not paid its due.
I list some of my questions which everyone is already aware of
and would request a reply. I would request you to not break the bullet and
reply each of them separately. Of course! If you are comfortable.
==Conference==
(a) Did CIS-A2K organize a conference/meetup in Bengaluru
this summer?
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities
were invited?
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on
your response to part b) was an official notification sent via village
pump, mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in
the process?
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not
maintaining transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the
question is NO)?
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the
community?
(g) How much funds were involved?
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K
staff during the workshop?
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly
reports on the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
@Satdeep: I could not find any Meta page but I do find a page
which is put under-construction and this mentions you. Were you a part of
this? If Yes, I am not able to understand, the entire argument you had
posted yesterday about reporting guidelines and transparency.
Only If, You Were A Party to This.
To Everyone, I understand I may be playing the devil’s role
here. Some of my close aides have already advised me to stay back since I
am damaging my personal reputation.
My argument is simple if my personal image promotes
inclusiveness and transparency. I will be happy to remain a soldier
fighting.
Abhinav
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--
Netha Hussain
Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
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[Tanveer Hasan]

Hi Abhinav,

Thanks for the reminder, I have replied to the earlier email with inline
comments.

Regards,

ಮಂಗಳ, ಞೆಪ್ಟೆಂ 4, 2018 ರಂಊು 09:27 ಪೂರ್ವಟಹ್ಚ ಞಮಯಕ್ಕೆ ರಂಊು Abhinav srivastava <

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Tanveer
This is just a friendly reminder that you are supposed to reply on this
thread. It has been more than 1 month now since I floated my concerns.
Although you are no longer a part of the Access to Knowledge Team and now a
staff with Wikimedia Foundation, I understand you are still part of the
movement and could answer for your previous office. I am copying this on
your Wikimedia Foundation Mail Id as well.
The silence has been a cause of personal trouble for me. I have been
subject to personal humiliation such as, 'witch hunt' on this thread.
As claimed by you that best efforts would be undertaken to provide reports
by the end of August, hasn't happened. We are now in the 37th week of the
year. The clarity on how the public money is being spent by CIS-A2K still
remains unclear.
Abhinav

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Those are two different issues of reporting, Satdeep. Anyways, I think
that matter has been sorted for now.
Sure, that would be a good way. We can discuss about conflicts in private
mail.
Abhinav

Post by Satdeep Gill
Hi all,
Documentation and Reporting has generally been an issue. As Subha
mentioned about a lot of footage and no bandwidth to upload, it reminds me
of WCI2018 where we had 500 GB data and could only work around about a 100
GB of that.
And yes some communities/volunteers have been doing a lot of great
activities but don't publicize it much and nor do they write blogposts
about the same. I believe this is something where we need some support from
each other.
@Abhinav srivastava <***@gmail.com> I believe everyone who was
going to Berlin was invited to attend the event in Bangalore. I do know
about one person not being available during those dates and another one was
refused visa. I might be missing out on something here.
Regarding disturbed neutrality at my end, I just wanted to say that I am
first a volunteer and then a part-employee and in my view my volunteer
activities (which includes my role in AffCom) are very much different from
my role in the New Readers program. I am happy to discuss more about this
in private email.
Regards
Satdeep Gill

Post by Ashwin Baindur
Thanks. I was just expressing my concerns.

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Ashwin Sir,
It is a matter of one’s personal privacy. Otherwise, I would have
shared the delegate name immediately. This is similar to sharing
Bodisattwa’s talk about 2016 Wikimania where I shared the relevant link on
his personal email. If anyone is not comfortable then why force and take
his name. Yes, 2 lakhs is not the issue but you can see why I had stated so.
Anyways, I would like to say, in future if I ever need a help from say
Bengali, Punjabi, Oriya community; Bodhisattwa, Satdeep, Subhashish would
be the first people to come and offer their support. There is enough good
in the Indian community and at times it does not get reflected on the
mailing list. 😊
Let me tell you, I am working on a GLAM partnership and nobody else
but Satdeep offered me help and support. This happened this Monday itself.
Discussions and Debates are just a part of the community interactions.
As they say, the democratic process is strengthened more only when you
practice it. By practice only we learn, ‘we learn how to be polite’, ‘how
to maintain friendly space’, ‘how to be kind etc’. Anyways, If I have been
rude, I would like to apologize straight away.
@ Subhashish: Thank You For The Positive Message. I am also happy to
learn about activities in your User Group.
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 5:57 PM Subhashish Panigrahi <

Post by Subhashish Panigrahi
Abhinav, I think it's a valid expectation for a public report from
any volunteer in the movement when the donation money is spent. So, please
don't apologize to me. But there are many factors — priorities in life,
time commitment, need for something, and many more that stops one from
being available for post-event documentation.
Maybe the following would help explain. Our user group tries to
document a lot. To put things into a perspective, our recent-most event,
the 16th anniversary of Odia Wikipedia, has a long and detailed
documentation in Odia (https://or.wikipedia.org/s/1bia) - thanks to
contributors like Sangram Keshari Senapati, Bikash Ojha and many others who
managed to document a lot of valuable portions from the discussions. We
have recorded about 50 Gb of interviews and sessions just during this event
that we now have no bandwidth to edit and upload. It will take a few more
months for us to do that. :)
As a new user group, we have also supported neighboring communities
like Santali where we interviewed many of the active and new Wikimedians
(almost 50 Gbs of media again) during a workshop that we helped organize
with support from A2K.
These are just a couple of examples of what we intend to do and how
things turn up differently in reality. Trust me, we really want to document
publicly as much as we can and there are genuine factors that slow many of
us down. But point noted - there is always a room for improvement. I
personally assumed that as there is a Etherpad note that Tito and others at
A2K had created during the two-day meeting, sharing that with the community
was enough. We indeed had a discussion and Sailesh who works at A2K and
other colleagues at our user group can share more about the same.
Subhashish
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 5:20 PM Abhinav srivastava <

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Netha,
I had no idea about you neither I am directing at you. This is for
other Wikimedias residing in India.
Sorry for the inconveniences.
Abhinav

Post by Netha Hussain
Dear all,
My response to Abhinav's question, just to clarify about my
2.) I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate
in the Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of
them was invited? I wish to hear.
I am an Indian Wikimedian and I was selected by the WMF to
participate in Wikimedia Conference 2018. I attended in my capacity as a
volunteer and delivered the Diversity statement and led the
diversity discussion
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Documentation/Movement_Strategy_track/Day_2>
there. I was not informed about this Bangalore conference conducted by the
CIS, and I do not expect to be invited because I live in a different
country, and flying me to India would have been very expensive.
Additionally, my role in WMCON 2018 was to talk specifically about
Diversity, which is not exclusively an India-related topic. I did not
represent any affiliate from India, either.
The complete list of participants who attended WMCON 18 can be found here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Participants%27_List>
.
Regards
Netha
On Fri, 10 Aug 2018 at 13:28, Abhinav srivastava <

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Tanveer and Subhashish,
Thank You, Tanveer for acknowledging, responding, apologizing and
most importantly assuring on transparency.
I still have a few concerns and I wish to write back. I would
appreciate if I can hear back.
1.) Your proposal also mentions on inviting Experienced Indian
Wikimedians. While, as per your response I do not find any Wikimedian
attending in this category. I would like to record a suggestion. Bengaluru
is one of the highly populated cities and also comprising a high number of
migrant populations. In the upcoming events, you can invite Experience
Wikimedians from other languages groups which still do not have a User
Group and are based in Bengaluru. They may not be attending the Wikimedia
Conference in Berlin, they may not be even from your focused languages. The
idea is very similar to the statement put forward by your organization and
Wikimedia India during the Wiki Conference India, “While some communities
have dynamic leaders and enough community level activity

.this cannot be
said for all communities.”
2.) I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate
in the Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of
them was invited? I wish to hear.
3.) Once you complete the Meta page, I would request you to
please share on this thread. I would encourage you and your team to
document as much as you can about your activities on Meta.
4.) It is already to my understanding that the absence of your
communication manager has led to defaults in your newsletter. I would like
to re-iterate as documented on the other mail thread, Wikimedia Communities
are voluntary driven, some staff should devote time and keep sharing. This
is just a suggestion.
@ Subhashish: Sorry to cross-post a bit from the other thread, I
happened to miss your last message since another message popped in within
10 minutes and I couldn’t distinguish. I believe putting comments about
your personal experiences at Wikimedia Movements wasn’t the best sportive
thing one could do. Since those were put on a public thread, so, on a
public thread, I would like to *apologize*. I still may remain
unconvinced on not having bandwidth, reports and other issues, but, Yes, I
shouldn’t have brought your personal story.
Also, I advise Odia User Group to be more active in documenting
about such works on their Meta page and Village Pump. Our communities are
too big in nature, they often get sorted into two haves – one who dedicate
more time to the movement and remain known faces amongst each other, two-
who edit but devote less time to activities but they also put their
contributions. There are numerous such silent editors in every community.
Please take this only to be a suggestion, no negative remarks here.
@Satdeep : I was expecting to hear from you. As Tanveer, points
out on having spent roughly Rs 2 lakhs, this is amount is much more than
that spent on to endorse a scholarship to Wikimania. But that’s not my
question, I think we should refrain from that on this thread. You were a
part of the conference were no heeds to transparency and reporting was made
(even the CIS-A2K staff accepts this). Secondly, you hold a chair in AffCom
and also a WMF staff (yes part-time). I am of the opinion that neutrality
has somewhere been disturbed at your end. A personal freindly suggestion.
Abhinav
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 3:11 PM Subhashish Panigrahi <

Post by Subhashish Panigrahi
Thanks Tanveer for this frank clarification.
@Abhinav srivastava <***@gmail.com>, I didn't check
earlier that there is a point concerning me. So just a small clarification
- my point was not to show how A2K organized the event in a non-transparent
way but to share the fact that I was a participant and did not know very
well what went behind organizing the event. Also, I participated in my
capacity of a rep of Odia Wikimedians User Group who happened to live in
Bangalore (so it was logistically cheaper even though we didn't go to WMCON
this year). For the record, Tanveer did share with me about this factor and
the second factor — that our UG will be eligible next year to send a rep —
for inviting me. My participation was not in the capacity of a former
employee of CIS. :)
Subhashish
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 2:59 PM Tanveer Hasan <

Post by Tanveer Hasan
Dear Abhinav,
==Conference==
Hello,
(a) Did CIS-A2K organize a conference/meetup in Bengaluru
Yes, we organised a WMCON India 2018 as per our proposal [1]
that was submitted to the FDC in March 2017.
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities
were invited?
The delegates were not selected by CIS. Participants
invited/selected by WMF to participate in WMCON 2018 [2] in Berlin were
invited to this meeting. User Group representatives who will be
participating in WMCON 2019 (residing in Bangalore) were invited to
participate as well.
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on
your response to part b) was an official notification sent via village
pump, mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
As the participants were already selected by another affiliate
of WMF, we did not want to reinvent the process and hence sent them
personal emails as invite to this conference. We apologise for not sending
out the event agenda and details about the event on mailing list and
village pump of all the Indic communities.
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the
process?
Our intention was not to be ‘non transparent’, the participant
list was put up by WMDE Conference organising team and we invited only
those people whose name featured in the official participant list. Sunil
Abraham, Executive Director, CIS and Ananth Subray, Program Associate, A2K,
Subhashish Panigrahi, representing Odia User group and Dr. U.B. Pavanaja,
representing Karavali Wikimedians User Group were the only participants who
were present whose name was not on the Participants list.
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not
maintaining transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the
question is NO)?
I would like to reiterate that our intention was not to be
‘non-transparent’. A2K team apologises for not sending out adequate
information to communities and requisite channels of communication. We will
strive to improve our communication with the community for all of our
events.
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the
community?
There is a meta page that had been created but has not been
completed. We will priorotise the reporting of this event and revert with
relevant updates.
(g) How much funds were involved?
We used an approximate amount of INR.2 lakh for this event.
Major expenses were incurred in arranging transport and hospitality.
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff
during the workshop?
Four members of the CIS-A2K team participated in the meeting.
Mr. Sunil Abraham, Executive Director was the chief facilitator
on Day 1.
Tanveer Hasan and Tito Dutta were organisers and co-facilitators
for the conversations for both days.
Ananth Subray attended the event to coordinate logistics and
reimbursements.
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly
reports on the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
We have defaulted on our newsletter because of the exit of our
communications officer. All the reports are updated here [3]. We will also
update reports here [4] at the earliest.
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
We will do our best to update reports by the end of this month.
[1].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2017_-_June_2018/Skill_Building_Initiatives#Wikimedia_India_conference_2018
[2].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Participants%27_List
[3]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports
[4]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports
Regards,
ಭಟಚು, ಆಗ 5, 2018 ರಂಊು 07:22 ಪೂರ್ವಟಹ್ಚ ಞಮಯಕ್ಕೆ ರಂಊು Abhinav

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Thank You Tito for your mail.
I would request you to address the issues within 10 days from
now. This is just a request.
Also, one of your colleagues and also my friend informed me
that he wanted to reply but his e-mail is being moderated or blacklisted. I
have taken this issue with the mailing list admins and the admins have
looked into the issue clarifying the said collegeue wasn’t moderated or
blacklisted. In case, any issue still arises, please ping me and I will do
my best to settle this.
Thank You for writing back.
Abhinav

Post by Tito Dutta
Hello Abhinav,
On behalf of the team, I confirm that we have received your
questions. Thanks for these questions.
We have a hectic schedule right now because of few things such
as CIS (the main institution's) strategy meet, staff transition, grant
report, and some other works.
Transparency and accountability are very important topics. If
things are not clear for a couple of events, we must work on it.
Some other member or I'll get back with answers in a few days.
(I am cc-ing Sunil Abraham, ED, of the institution, in this email)
Thanks
Tito Dutta
Note: If I don't reply to your email in 2 days, please feel
free to remind me over email or phone call.
On Fri, 3 Aug 2018 at 13:47, Abhinav srivastava <

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Dear Friends From CIS-A2K,
I am bringing up a discussion based on few of the concerns
expressed on the other mail thread. I would like to acknowledge on record,
the past few years CIS-A2K has reached out to communities (besides Focussed
Language Area) much more effectively. I may be the first person to say this
publicly but I am sure many more would echo my views here.
Now what concerns me and something CIS-A2K already knows,
when the community has started acknowledging your work much more, CIS-A2K
has been acting as the necessary intervention in times of crisis why
transparency is being not paid its due.
I list some of my questions which everyone is already aware
of and would request a reply. I would request you to not break the bullet
and reply each of them separately. Of course! If you are comfortable.
==Conference==
(a) Did CIS-A2K organize a conference/meetup in Bengaluru
this summer?
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities
were invited?
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on
your response to part b) was an official notification sent via village
pump, mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in
the process?
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not
maintaining transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the
question is NO)?
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with
the community?
(g) How much funds were involved?
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K
staff during the workshop?
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly
reports on the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
@Satdeep: I could not find any Meta page but I do find a page
which is put under-construction and this mentions you. Were you a part of
this? If Yes, I am not able to understand, the entire argument you had
posted yesterday about reporting guidelines and transparency.
Only If, You Were A Party to This.
To Everyone, I understand I may be playing the devil’s role
here. Some of my close aides have already advised me to stay back since I
am damaging my personal reputation.
My argument is simple if my personal image promotes
inclusiveness and transparency. I will be happy to remain a soldier
fighting.
Abhinav
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--
Netha Hussain
Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
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[Tanveer Hasan]

Hello Abhinav,

Please see replies inline

On Fri, 10 Aug 2018 at 16:58, Abhinav srivastava <***@gmail.com>
wrote:

Hello Tanveer and Subhashish,

Thank You, Tanveer for acknowledging, responding, apologizing and most
importantly assuring on transparency.

I still have a few concerns and I wish to write back. I would appreciate if
I can hear back.

1.) Your proposal also mentions on inviting Experienced Indian Wikimedians.
While, as per your response I do not find any Wikimedian attending in this
category. I would like to record a suggestion. Bengaluru is one of the
highly populated cities and also comprising a high number of migrant
populations. In the upcoming events, you can invite Experience Wikimedians
from other languages groups which still do not have a User Group and are
based in Bengaluru. They may not be attending the Wikimedia Conference in
Berlin, they may not be even from your focused languages. The idea is very
similar to the statement put forward by your organization and Wikimedia
India during the Wiki Conference India, “While some communities have
dynamic leaders and enough community level activity

.this cannot be said
for all communities.”

--

This event was organised within a short notice and we were unable to invite
all the stakeholders of Wikimedia movement in India. We have taken note of
your suggestion and assure that efforts will be made to invite Wikimedians
of all languages and projects. We'll inform and request suggestions about
the event on the mailing list before the next iteration.

2.) I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate in the
Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of them was
invited? I wish to hear.

--

We have updated the participants list. We invited all the Wikimedians from
India who attended Wikimedian Conference India 2018. 2 editors, one from
Bengali community, and one from Hindi community informed us that they can
not attend the event. Only for one Wikimedian, the email was sent to a
wrong email address, and was discovered late. We apologise for this, and we
also apologised to the Wikimedian in person in Berlin.


3.) Once you complete the Meta page, I would request you to please share on
this thread. I would encourage you and your team to document as much as you
can about your activities on Meta.

--

We are working on it and you may see some progress here on the event page:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_(India)

Due to transition it is taking a little time. The feedback process is
starting. We do hope in next 1 week or so this will be done.

.

You may also see the last Progress report:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2016-2017_round_2/The_Centre_for_Internet_and_Society/Progress_report_form
and Impact report:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2015-2016_round_2/The_Centre_for_Internet_and_Society/Impact_report_form

4.) It is already to my understanding that the absence of your
communication manager has led to defaults in your newsletter. I would like
to re-iterate as documented on the other mail thread, Wikimedia Communities
are voluntary driven, some staff should devote time and keep sharing. This
is just a suggestion.

-- We will try to devote more time towards documentation and reporting of
the events. CIS-A2K team will also initiate the recruitment process for
Communications Officer in September, 2018.

ಶುಕ್ರ, ಆಗ 10, 2018 ರಂಊು 04:58 ಅಪರಟಹ್ಚ ಞಮಯಕ್ಕೆ ರಂಊು Abhinav srivastava <

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Hello Tanveer and Subhashish,
Thank You, Tanveer for acknowledging, responding, apologizing and most
importantly assuring on transparency.
I still have a few concerns and I wish to write back. I would appreciate
if I can hear back.
1.) Your proposal also mentions on inviting Experienced Indian
Wikimedians. While, as per your response I do not find any Wikimedian
attending in this category. I would like to record a suggestion. Bengaluru
is one of the highly populated cities and also comprising a high number of
migrant populations. In the upcoming events, you can invite Experience
Wikimedians from other languages groups which still do not have a User
Group and are based in Bengaluru. They may not be attending the Wikimedia
Conference in Berlin, they may not be even from your focused languages. The
idea is very similar to the statement put forward by your organization and
Wikimedia India during the Wiki Conference India, “While some communities
have dynamic leaders and enough community level activity

.this cannot be
said for all communities.”
2.) I am not sure if all those selected by WMF to participate in the
Wikimedia Conference 2018 were invited. Are you sure every one of them was
invited? I wish to hear.
3.) Once you complete the Meta page, I would request you to please
share on this thread. I would encourage you and your team to document as
much as you can about your activities on Meta.
4.) It is already to my understanding that the absence of your
communication manager has led to defaults in your newsletter. I would like
to re-iterate as documented on the other mail thread, Wikimedia Communities
are voluntary driven, some staff should devote time and keep sharing. This
is just a suggestion.
@ Subhashish: Sorry to cross-post a bit from the other thread, I happened
to miss your last message since another message popped in within 10 minutes
and I couldn’t distinguish. I believe putting comments about your personal
experiences at Wikimedia Movements wasn’t the best sportive thing one could
do. Since those were put on a public thread, so, on a public thread, I
would like to *apologize*. I still may remain unconvinced on not having
bandwidth, reports and other issues, but, Yes, I shouldn’t have brought
your personal story.
Also, I advise Odia User Group to be more active in documenting about such
works on their Meta page and Village Pump. Our communities are too big in
nature, they often get sorted into two haves – one who dedicate more time
to the movement and remain known faces amongst each other, two- who edit
but devote less time to activities but they also put their contributions.
There are numerous such silent editors in every community. Please take this
only to be a suggestion, no negative remarks here.
@Satdeep : I was expecting to hear from you. As Tanveer, points out on
having spent roughly Rs 2 lakhs, this is amount is much more than that
spent on to endorse a scholarship to Wikimania. But that’s not my
question, I think we should refrain from that on this thread. You were a
part of the conference were no heeds to transparency and reporting was made
(even the CIS-A2K staff accepts this). Secondly, you hold a chair in AffCom
and also a WMF staff (yes part-time). I am of the opinion that neutrality
has somewhere been disturbed at your end. A personal freindly suggestion.
Abhinav
On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 3:11 PM Subhashish Panigrahi <

Post by Subhashish Panigrahi
Thanks Tanveer for this frank clarification.
@Abhinav srivastava <***@gmail.com>, I didn't check earlier that
there is a point concerning me. So just a small clarification - my point
was not to show how A2K organized the event in a non-transparent way but to
share the fact that I was a participant and did not know very well what
went behind organizing the event. Also, I participated in my capacity of a
rep of Odia Wikimedians User Group who happened to live in Bangalore (so it
was logistically cheaper even though we didn't go to WMCON this year). For
the record, Tanveer did share with me about this factor and the second
factor — that our UG will be eligible next year to send a rep — for
inviting me. My participation was not in the capacity of a former employee
of CIS. :)
Subhashish

Post by Tanveer Hasan
Dear Abhinav,
==Conference==
Hello,
Yes, we organised a WMCON India 2018 as per our proposal [1] that was
submitted to the FDC in March 2017.
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?
The delegates were not selected by CIS. Participants invited/selected by
WMF to participate in WMCON 2018 [2] in Berlin were invited to this
meeting. User Group representatives who will be participating in WMCON 2019
(residing in Bangalore) were invited to participate as well.
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your
response to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump,
mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
As the participants were already selected by another affiliate of WMF,
we did not want to reinvent the process and hence sent them personal emails
as invite to this conference. We apologise for not sending out the event
agenda and details about the event on mailing list and village pump of all
the Indic communities.
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?
Our intention was not to be ‘non transparent’, the participant list was
put up by WMDE Conference organising team and we invited only those people
whose name featured in the official participant list. Sunil Abraham,
Executive Director, CIS and Ananth Subray, Program Associate, A2K,
Subhashish Panigrahi, representing Odia User group and Dr. U.B. Pavanaja,
representing Karavali Wikimedians User Group were the only participants who
were present whose name was not on the Participants list.
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not maintaining
transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the question is
NO)?
I would like to reiterate that our intention was not to be
‘non-transparent’. A2K team apologises for not sending out adequate
information to communities and requisite channels of communication. We will
strive to improve our communication with the community for all of our
events.
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?
There is a meta page that had been created but has not been completed.
We will priorotise the reporting of this event and revert with relevant
updates.
(g) How much funds were involved?
We used an approximate amount of INR.2 lakh for this event. Major
expenses were incurred in arranging transport and hospitality.
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff during
the workshop?
Four members of the CIS-A2K team participated in the meeting.
Mr. Sunil Abraham, Executive Director was the chief facilitator on Day 1.
Tanveer Hasan and Tito Dutta were organisers and co-facilitators for the
conversations for both days.
Ananth Subray attended the event to coordinate logistics and
reimbursements.
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly reports on
the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
We have defaulted on our newsletter because of the exit of our
communications officer. All the reports are updated here [3]. We will also
update reports here [4] at the earliest.
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
We will do our best to update reports by the end of this month.
[1].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Work_plan_July_2017_-_June_2018/Skill_Building_Initiatives#Wikimedia_India_conference_2018
[2].
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Participants%27_List
[3]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reports
[4]. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CIS-A2K/Reports
Regards,
ಭಟಚು, ಆಗ 5, 2018 ರಂಊು 07:22 ಪೂರ್ವಟಹ್ಚ ಞಮಯಕ್ಕೆ ರಂಊು Abhinav srivastava <

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Thank You Tito for your mail.
I would request you to address the issues within 10 days from now. This
is just a request.
Also, one of your colleagues and also my friend informed me that he
wanted to reply but his e-mail is being moderated or blacklisted. I have
taken this issue with the mailing list admins and the admins have looked
into the issue clarifying the said collegeue wasn’t moderated or
blacklisted. In case, any issue still arises, please ping me and I will do
my best to settle this.
Thank You for writing back.
Abhinav

Post by Tito Dutta
Hello Abhinav,
On behalf of the team, I confirm that we have received your questions.
Thanks for these questions.
We have a hectic schedule right now because of few things such as CIS
(the main institution's) strategy meet, staff transition, grant report, and
some other works.
Transparency and accountability are very important topics. If things
are not clear for a couple of events, we must work on it.
Some other member or I'll get back with answers in a few days.
(I am cc-ing Sunil Abraham, ED, of the institution, in this email)
Thanks
Tito Dutta
Note: If I don't reply to your email in 2 days, please feel free to
remind me over email or phone call.

Post by Abhinav srivastava
Dear Friends From CIS-A2K,
I am bringing up a discussion based on few of the concerns expressed
on the other mail thread. I would like to acknowledge on record, the past
few years CIS-A2K has reached out to communities (besides Focussed Language
Area) much more effectively. I may be the first person to say this publicly
but I am sure many more would echo my views here.
Now what concerns me and something CIS-A2K already knows, when the
community has started acknowledging your work much more, CIS-A2K has been
acting as the necessary intervention in times of crisis why transparency is
being not paid its due.
I list some of my questions which everyone is already aware of and
would request a reply. I would request you to not break the bullet and
reply each of them separately. Of course! If you are comfortable.
==Conference==
(a) Did CIS-A2K organize a conference/meetup in Bengaluru this summer?
(b) How were the delegates selected and which communities were invited?
(c) For all those communities who were invited (based on your
response to part b) was an official notification sent via village pump,
mailing list, reaching out to User Group representatives?
(d) Is there a legitimate reason to be non-transparent in the process?
(e) When a former CIS-A2K staff informed you about not
maintaining transparency why was still no heed paid to it (if part d of the
question is NO)?
(f) Can reports, learning patterns etc be shared with the community?
(g) How much funds were involved?
(h) What were the responsibilities of different CIS-A2K staff
during the workshop?
==Reports==
(a) What has been stopping CIS-A2K to share their monthly reports
on the mailing list and their Report Section of Wikimedia Meta?
(b) Can we hear about the reports, shortly?
@Satdeep: I could not find any Meta page but I do find a page which
is put under-construction and this mentions you. Were you a part of this?
If Yes, I am not able to understand, the entire argument you had posted
yesterday about reporting guidelines and transparency.
Only If, You Were A Party to This.
To Everyone, I understand I may be playing the devil’s role here.
Some of my close aides have already advised me to stay back since I am
damaging my personal reputation.
My argument is simple if my personal image promotes inclusiveness and
transparency. I will be happy to remain a soldier fighting.
Abhinav
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