Wikimedia Foundation elections/2021/Candidates/Pavan Santhosh Surampudi/id

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Pavan Santhosh Surampudi (Pavan santhosh.s)

Pavan santhosh.s (talk meta edits global user summary CA  AE)

Rincian kandidat
At BVRIT, Hyderabad, (July 2017)
  • Pribadi:
  • Pengalaman kontribusi:
    • Wikimediawan sejak: Desember 2013
    • Wiki-wiki aktif: Telugu Wikipedia, Telugu Wikisource, Commons
pernyataan (Tidak lebih dari 450 kata)

My work in community building, governance, and partnerships in a country like India with diverse opportunities entangled with complex issues helped me to have a unique experience and insights that will be helpful for me in my work as a Board member.

I am from the southern part of India and started my involvement with the Wikimedia movement by editing Telugu-language Wikipedia in 2013. Right from the beginning, I am involved in improving content, working towards community growth, planning and executing projects, and movement governance. I have created 750+ new articles and substantially improved over 800+ articles in Telugu Wikipedia with over 49,000 global edits. During my early months of contribution, I participated in Telugu Wikipedia 10th anniversary which gave me insights into the community and its goals. It led me to collaborate and initiate several on-wiki and off-wiki activities. One of the notable projects is to create an on-Wiki catalogue of Telugu books present in the Digital library of India which was further used as a resource for content creation.

Later on, I joined the Centre for Internet and Society - Access to Knowledge as a community advocate for Telugu language Wikimedia projects. My key responsibilities during this period were to improve content & quality, work towards community growth, build and manage new partnerships, and build capacity in the community. My initiatives resulted in improving 25,000 stubs to start class on Telugu Wikipedia, co-organized Train-the-trainer 2019 and Wikimedia Summit India 2019. My experience also involves building and managing partnerships with education institutions and government entities. I have also been part of the Community Health Working Group in the Movement Strategy process.

I am currently working as Community Manager at Quora where I work involves building and managing Quora’s Telugu community across the world. I am the community manager for Quora in Telugu, from the beginning. I have been SPOC from its Alpha and Beta testing phase, and public launch, and working closely with product and engineering teams. To grow the project, I work on partnerships, developing & executing marketing strategies, among other things.


About my motivation and Goals

Wikimedia projects’ role in improving access and opening up knowledge spaces and impacting millions of people around the world is a constant motivation for me to contribute to the projects. The Wikimedia movement has a great potential to make a lasting impact on even more people where current government and societal structures are neglecting and keeping them away from the availability of knowledge. Current issues like harassment, less diversity, centralized power and lack of adoption to rapidly growing technological aspects are hindering the Wikimedia movement's progress in this direction. I am deeply motivated to contribute my part in participating in movement governance by serving as a board member to Wikimedia Foundation

Tiga prioritas utama Dewan Pengawas

1. Hiring and onboarding CEO: Hiring the right candidate as CEO is a priority issue to build on major initiatives and steps taken by Katherine Maher and to ensure the progress made in the last few years won’t be reverted to earlier phases of uncertainty.

2. Empowering stakeholders across the movement: Empowering Wikimedia movement entities and reducing the excessive centralisation of power all over the world is key to make leaps in the strategic direction we are committed to.

3. Improving board relations with the community: Building trust and belongingness is an important aspect of collaboration with the community. Community is the main and highly crucial stakeholder in movement and it should have more skin in the game when it comes to key decision making. The board should be easily accessible to community members through various channels.

Tiga prioritas utama Strategi Gerakan

1. Invest in Skills and Leadership Development: Without a sustainable skill and leadership development programme in place, there will be little difference in what is already happening in the movement. Additionally, As Foundation and movement are built from the earnest contribution from volunteers this should also help in giving back.

2. Establish a movement-wide knowledge base: Building a movement-wide knowledge base that is well-structured and multilingual will help leadership and governance across the world. Being a major source of knowledge in the world, it is a disadvantage for us not to have such a meta-level knowledge bank.

3. Improve User Experience: Wikimedia projects should catch up with current technological advancements which can solve several issues we are facing in participation and retention.

verifikasi verifikasi dilakukan
Eligibilitas terverifikasi: terverifikasi
diverifikasi oleh: Matanya (talk) 20:45, 1 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Identifikasi: terverifikasi
Diverifikasi oleh: Joe Sutherland (Wikimedia Foundation) (talk) 18:20, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Trustee Evaluation Form
Trustee Evaluation Form
Years of Experience
<1 1–2 2–5 5–10 10+

Wikimedia experience. The candidate is a dedicated contributor to the Wikimedia movement. Eligible contributions include: contributions to the Wikimedia projects, membership in a Wikimedia organization or affiliate, activities as a Wikimedia movement organizer, or participation with a Wikimedia movement ally organization.

5-10 years: I have been on Wikimedia projects since December 2013. I am currently an admin in Telugu Wikipedia. My contributions are mainly to Telugu-language Wikipedia. I have created 750+ new articles and substantially improved over 800+ articles in Telugu Wikipedia with over 49,000 global edits. I am involved in improving content, working towards community growth, planning and executing projects, and movement governance.

Board experience. The candidate has served on the board of trustees/directors or other similar governing body of a nationally- or globally-focused organization (non-profit, for-profit, or governmental).

No. I do not have board experience.

Executive experience. The candidate has worked at an executive level for an organization, department, or project of comparable (or greater) size, complexity, and scope to the Wikimedia Foundation.

No. I do not have executive-level experience. But currently, I am working for Quora which has over 300 million monthly users and is in 24 language versions all over the world. I am currently working as Community Manager at Quora where I work involves building and managing Quora’s Telugu community across the world. I am working as community manager for Quora in Telugu, from the beginning. I have been SPOC from its Alpha and Beta phases, and public launch, and working closely with product and engineering teams. To grow the project, I work on partnerships, developing & executing marketing strategies, among other things

Subject matter expertise. The candidate has worked or significantly volunteered in an area relevant to the work of the Foundation and the Board. Such areas will be determined on an annual basis and may include areas such as Global movement building and community organization, enterprise-level platform technology and/or product development, public policy and the law, knowledge sector (e.g., academia/GLAM/education), human rights and social justice, open Internet/free and open source software, organizational strategy and management, finance and financial oversight, non-profit fundraising, human resources, board governance.

Yes, my expertise is in community development. I worked at the Centre for Internet and Society - Access to Knowledge as a community advocate for Telugu language Wikimedia projects. My key responsibilities during this period were to improve content & quality, work towards community growth, build and manage new partnerships (Government and educational, mainly), and build capacity in the community. My current work at Quora as Community Manager also has to do with building and managing communities.

Diversity: Background The candidate belongs or belonged to a group that has faced historical discrimination and underrepresentation in structures of power (related to, for example, gender, race, ethnicity, disability, LGBTQ+ identity, social class, economic status, or caste).

Yes: I am a straight male and was born in a caste that was traditionally considered upper caste but lost its economic and political edge during the 1980s in Andhra Pradesh, India. I come from a lower-middle-class background and my father is a classic Indian middle-class employee where one member of the family earns while 9 family members need to be fed and supported with that salary. I completed all my education in rural and semi-urban places far away from India’s Top education facilities and obviously from the world’s prestigious organizations.

This background resulted in a mix of being privileged in few aspects and under-privileged in remaining.

To put it in perspective, I am the first person in my own family (even in 2-3 generations; not considering extended family who benefited by the late 2000s due to globalisation & liberalisation policies of India) to travel in a flight. It was a celebrated and cherished moment for my parents and siblings. But, noting the fact that crores of other Indians still had not yet stepped into a flight

Diversity: Geography The candidate would contribute to the overall geographic diversity of the Board of Trustees, based on the geographic regions where they have lived.

Yes. I come from Andhra Pradesh state in India.

Diversity: Language The candidate is a native speaker of a language other than English.

Yes. My first language is Telugu. I was educated in English as a medium of instruction while I was always fascinated and intrigued by my first language for its rich cultural and literary aspects. The Telugu language is 11th among most spoken languages in the world and 4th in India, still, it lacks support from the government and institutions like many other native tongues in post-colonial societies. I, personally, am a victim of these policies during my education and later time. A large part of my work is motivated to understand and improve the condition of these languages and contribute to the education & knowledge equity in that respect.

Diversity: Political system experience The candidate has substantial experience living in and/or working to share knowledge in a non-democratic, state-censoring, or repressive context.

Tidak