On 5 October 2015 at 02:51, James Forrester <james@jdforrester.org> wrote:

On Sun, 4 Oct 2015 at 11:25 Joseph Fox <josephfoxwiki@gmail.com> wrote:
On 4 October 2015 at 19:10, James Forrester <jdforrester@gmail.com> wrote:
At the Committee’s meeting in Mexico City in August, we agreed to alter the way that Wikimania locations are decided.

I don't mean to slight yourself, James, or the committee, but this seems an unnecessary delay. Why is this only now being communicated?

A fair question. We spent too long discussing options rather than presenting this earlier. I'm sorry. I have discussed this change with a variety of people since at least 2007, and others were talking about it before me, but as the complexity of Wikimania rises each year it has become more chronic. As Chair of the Committee, the delay is my fault, and I apologise.

Would it not have been wise to reveal this as it was agreed upon rather than now, after at least two bidding parties have put time and effort into their bids for 2017?

I might equally ask why people not associated with running Wikimania decided the create and keep updating mistaken pages on meta about Wikimania 2017 being open for bids without even a post to this list, let alone the Committee, where we could have pointed out it was false before people spent time ill-advisedly. :-(

I followed the process because that is what was publish, it was the process that the community had developed over the last ten years and there was no indication that the community process had been usurped....

People on the committee had been through the very same process, you as Chair of this committee have been involved in the process for a long time and knew that people would be preparing to follow the Meta process well before the dates. You as chair lead the changes you as chair were responsible to ensure those changes were communicate and any processes already published you updated in a timely manor to ensure people knew about that...

oh and those pages suggested people join this list there was never an instruction to contact the committee and seek their permission to bid as the bid selction was to be done by a jury after a period of open public nominations.

The large majority of our community members are based in either North America or Europe; organising Wikimanias in these areas allows the majority of our community members to attend cheaply, so that money spent on scholarships can go further, and be more focussed in supporting our community members wherever they are based.

This is true and cannot be ignored. But why, then, is "Europe" such a narrow definition? Why no provision for Eastern Europe and Russia? This seems quite disappointing given we have active affiliates in these areas.

The groupings are based on where the majority of Wikimedians are. They can of course change over time. I was hoping to work with fellow Wikimedians to narrow down these definitions so that it's clear for instance which group each interested community group falls.

Gnangarra