Hi Pine,
You seem to forget that the effort the doctors, nurses and staff at a hospital either in
after-the-hurricane Louisiana or war-torn South Sudan is way bigger than those working for
a state-of-the art hospital in Portland, Zurich or Singapore, so you think they
shouldn't be considered "good hospitals" or not even "hospitals"
because they don't meet the quantitative and set on stone criteria you suggest?
I find that divisive, discriminatory, patronizing, to say the least. Every chapter's
situation is different, so being absolutely quantitative would be unfair and damaging to
the movement and the efforts of many wikimedians who cannot contribute in the ideal
conditions, yet they go the extra mile where others living in a paradise wouldn't do
that.
*hat on*
Again, the idea is to collect all valuable input from the community to refine the
criteria, so nothing is set in stone yet. But that's the general idea and the AffCom
is there to assist as much as possible to those groups who wish to meet the criteria.
Sent from my HTC
----- Reply message -----
From: "Pine W" <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com>
To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" <wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>rg>,
"Wikimedia Movement Affiliates discussion list"
<affiliates(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Cc: "Wikimedia Chapters general discussions" <chapters(a)wikimedia.ch>
Subject: [Affiliates] [Wikimedia-l] Changes to current chapter and thematic organisation
criteria
Date: Sun, Aug 21, 2016 4:20 AM
Hi Carlos,
As I mentioned previously, I would suggest that the criteria should also apply to existing
chapters. If any chapter's status is in doubt as a result of the new criteria, then
the chapter can be given 6 months to rise to the occasion. If chapters still do not meet
the new criteria after that time, it seems to me that they should be re-classified as user
groups until they re-apply for chapter status and are accepted by AffCom as meeting the
new criteria.
Regarding the uniformity of standards, it seems to me that there needs to be a common
baseline throughout the world. Otherwise, the definition of "chapter" becomes
highly subjective and is effectively at the discretion of the Affiliations Committee. To
use an analogy: a hospital that is providing reasonably good care for its patients would
be considered a good hospital whether it is in Louisiana or the Philippines. Likewise, a
hospital that lacks essential supplies, has a shortage of health professionals, and has
suffered hurricane damage to its surgery rooms, is a troubled hospital whether it is in
Louisiana or the Philippines.
To use another analogy, this time demonstrating the problems with subjective and varying
standards: the criteria for high school diplomas in the United States vary so widely that
by itself a high school diploma is a nearly useless credential without knowing which high
school granted a particular diploma. It seems to me that we should avoid this kind of
ambiguity in the Wikimedia community.
While there could be a variety of ways in which a group could be deemed to meet the
standards for a chapter, such as by saying "a chapter must meet four of the following
six criteria" or "this particular requirement may be met in one or more of the
following ways", it still seems to me that the criteria for chapter status should be
transparent, objective (primarily quantitative), and easily understood by all affiliates
that wish to be chapters.
I realize that this is a complex issue, and I hope that this input will be included for
consideration as AffCom continues to discuss the criteria for chapters and thematic
organizations.
Pine
El 19/08/2016 a las 06:28 p.m., Pine W escribió:
Hi Carlos,
In general, I like the new criteria.
I would like to suggest making the criteria entirely quantitative, so that
there is minimal subjectivity about whether or not affiliates are meeting
these standards and therefore there is likely to be less controversy about
the status of affiliates.
The problem of making the criteria entirely quantitative is that the
context where affiliates operate is not the same across the world. We
cannot apply a rigid, based in fixed numbers criteria because the
situation of Estonia or The Netherlands, to give an example, is not the
same of Venezuela, where people need to queue for hours just to buy a
loaf of bread, if they happen to be lucky enough to find a bakery
operating, or where scheduled 4-hour daily blackouts are the norm across
the country except for the capital.
If all affiliates operated in the same conditions, that would be another story.
El logotipo y el nombre de Wikimedia, Wikimedia Venezuela, Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons,
Wikimedia Incubator, Wiktionary y otros proyectos relacionados son marcas registradas
usadas bajo permiso expreso de su titular, la Fundación Wikimedia, Inc., una organización
sin fines de lucro. Otros nombres y marcas pertenecen a sus respectivos propietarios.
Asociación Civil Wikimedia Venezuela (Wikimedia Venezuela) | RIF.: J-40129321-2 | Los
Teques, Estado Miranda. Venezuela