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Reimagining the Knowledge Commons: Insights and reflections from the WikiConference India 2026 Scholarship program – Diff
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As the historic coastal city of Kochi, Kerala, gets ready to host the fourth iteration of WikiConference India (WCI 2026) from 4th to 6th September 2026. We are pleased to share our insights from the Scholarship Program, which is guided by the theme, “Reimagining the Knowledge Commons” – Community Leadership in an Evolving Wikimedia Ecosystem.
A rigorous scholarship program is essential to ensure equitable and inclusive participation, therefore positively impacting the long-term success of our conference. In the spirit of transparency and building upon the structural framework established during WCI 2023, this report details the approach, numbers, evaluation metrics, and learnings of the WCI 2026 Scholarship Committee, which reviewed over 413 valid submissions.
Setting up the Scholarship Committee
For WCI 2026, the Core Organizing Team (COT) assembled a diverse Scholarship Committee representing various Indic language sub-communities, on-wiki skills, and project expertise. To maintain integrity and to prevent external pressure, this committee operated under a strict code of confidentiality. Under this code, sharing of individual application ranks, scores, or internal deliberations externally was prohibited. Furthermore, a strict Conflict of Interest (COI) protocol was enforced: any reviewer with a personal or close organizational connection to an applicant recused themselves by marking the application as “COI” and immediately passing it to a peer.
The workload was distributed intentionally, pairing a primary reviewer and a secondary reviewer for each of the 90–130 applications assigned per person. Specialized applications were routed to domain experts to ensure fair evaluation. For instance, technical submissions involving MediaWiki and Phabricator were primarily reviewed by specialized technical evaluators; Wikidata-heavy applications were evaluated by specific committee members with contributions and expertise in it. Specific Indic language responses were processed by native-language speakers from the scholarship committee and COT.
Scholarship Categories
To ground our commitment to regional and linguistic diversity within budget, the committee established a hard cap of 120 fully funded scholarship slots. These allocations were structured across three distinct tiers based on geographic and logistical realities:
1. Domestic category (Indian residents): ~90 Scholars intended → 96 Scholars allocated
To maximize resources, the domestic tier introduced an innovative transit-differentiation strategy:
- Air Travel Support (~70 slots intended → 71 slots allocated): Scholars traveling long distances across India where ground transit would impede participation.
- Ground/Rail Travel Support (~20 slots intended → 25 slots allocated): Scholars residing within an 11-hour transit radius of Kochi. This rule successfully balanced fiscal responsibility and minimized our carbon footprint.
2. Regional category (Other South Asian Countries): 24 Scholars intended → 23 Scholars allocated
Acknowledging that cross-border collaboration is vital to the South Asian movement, this cohort saw a significant expansion. The final confirmed pool of 23 regional scholars brought crucial representation from across the borders:
- Bangladesh: 11 scholars representing Wikipedia (8), Wikisource (2), and Wikibooks (1).
- Nepal: 9 scholars representing Wikipedia (6), Wikimedia Commons (2), and Wiktionary (1).
- Sri Lanka: 2 scholars contributing to Wikipedia.
- Bhutan: 1 scholar contributing to Wikipedia.
3. International Cohort: 5 Scholars intended → 4 Scholars allocated
Active Indic Wikimedia project contributors, residing outside South Asia, who demonstrate profound, sustained engagement and allyship with Indic or South Asian Wikimedia communities. Four slots were ultimately confirmed across primary English, Gujarati, Malayalam, and Multilingual projects.
The Review & Evaluation Framework
To evaluate current momentum rather than historical status, the committee evaluated activities within a strict 30-month (2.5 years) window leading up to March 1, 2026. This ensured we are able to focus on active movement members, community organisers, technical innovators etc and truly bring alive our theme to ‘Reimagine the Knowledge Commons’.
The evaluation relied on a normalized quantitative system using the specialized community tool Glues via Toolforge, drawing contribution data from CentralAuth and XTools. Each reviewer could award a maximum score of 30 points, broken down across six specific objectives:
We had six evaluation parameters:
- Primary & secondary home projects carrying a maximum of 2 points
- Core Movement contribution areas carrying a maximum of 3 points and +1 bonus point for exceptional work from a newcomer
- On-Wiki contributions carrying 10 points
- Off-Wiki community engagement carrying 10 points + 3 for coordinating an outreach series; +1 for an individual workshop; +1 for mentoring/judging; +1 for global documentation
- External partnerships (optional) carrying 2 points
- Motivation & ecosystem alignment carrying 3 points and deducts 1 point for careless/empty answers.
Timeline and Batch Notifications
Managing an international application cycle requires precise operational timing to accommodate passport processing, visa processing, and institutional leave requests. The committee executed the cycle along the following timeline:
This multi-phased batch notification strategy allowed the logistics team to manage waitlists and to reallocate slots whenever an initially selected scholar declined or faced travel constraints.
Key learnings & takeaways
Reviewing hundreds of applications always unearths the delicate tension between mathematical objectivity and human nuance. The committee identified several critical structural wins and persistent systemic friction points during this cycle:
- Linguistic equity vs. absolute numbers: If selections were based purely on edit counts, larger language communities (like English or Tamil) would completely overshadow smaller, vibrant groups. By utilizing proportional allocation alongside the COT’s structural adjustments, we ensured representation for smaller language groups like Santali (4 slots confirmed), Tulu (4 slots confirmed), and Bhojpuri (1 slot confirmed).
- The Gender Gap dilemma: While the Domestic-Local pool achieved an anticipated 32% Female representation, and specific communities like Tamil showed high female engagement (20.83% of the regional/local breakdown), the overall Domestic-National pool lagged behind with only 29.58% Female representation against 69.01% Male and 1.41% Non-binary scholars. In some language brackets, no female applicants applied at all, emphasizing that scholarships cannot fix a diversity issue that must be addressed at the grassroots level.
- The technical contribution gap: Capturing technical contributions (Phabricator tickets, tool building, MediaWiki patches, Workshops/outreach lead) remains challenging in a framework optimized for content edits. While routing technical profiles directly to specialized reviewers improved fairness, the movement still lacks a unified data tool that weighs technical support on par with namespace edits.
- Cross-border bureaucracy: Visas and regional geopolitics posed quite some difficulty to this conference aimed at a convening of South Asian people. Despite issuing notifications in late May, cross-border travel friction required significant hands-on support from the organizing team.
Recommendations for future committees
- Allocate discretionary slots early: The WCI 2026 COT retained a discretionary pool of up to 24 slots (20% of the total 120 full scholarships) to manually adjust for thematic diversity (GLAM, Education, underrepresented languages). Future committees should explicitly codify this to protect against systemic gaps.
- Standardize Technical Metrics: Collaborate with Toolforge developers to build better aggregators for non-traditional contributions- such as event documentation, translation strings, brand strategists, and code reviews- before the application period opens.
Diversity in applications received
The WCI 2026 received a large number of applications with several geographic areas and languages represented. Find more information in the image below
Diversity in applications confirmed
The approved scholarship data displays that we ensured inclusion in terms of accepting applications from various regions, language communities, and primary projects. Find more information in the image below:
Conclusion & acknowledgments
The journey to Kochi has been a massive collaborative undertaking. The Scholarship Committee extends its deepest gratitude to every single Wikimedian who took the time to apply, detailing their passion and work for the open knowledge commons. We thank our relentless team of evaluators and the support of the Wikimedia Foundation Trust & Safety teams, who ensured the review process remained secure and equitable.
We look forward to welcoming our 123 scholars to the shared spaces, technical hackathons, lightning talks, and strategic workshops in Kochi. Together, let us reimagine the knowledge commons!
Have thoughts, questions, or ideas on how we can further improve regional scholarship structures? Please drop a comment in the section below or provide input on the Event discussion page!
