[Foundation-l] Movement Roles: my suggestion of "Language Contact Persons"

[Yaroslav M. Blanter]

> == New entities?==
> James Forrester and his group (sorry, I don't remember who was the
> official primus inter pares) presented in/before Haifa a list of new
> kinds of Wikimedia entities:
> * Chapters not based on national boundaries, but subjects such as
> railways, art, ethnic cultures, mathematics etc.

This is the idea I suggested in the discussions eventually leading to the
strategic plans. I believe that these entities should exist, but not as
chapters (which would imply a kind of control over content), but as
meta-projects: a cross-project extension of existing wiki-projects we
already have. They can indeed take care over content (including cross-wiki
issues which are plenty and not currently taken care of), but not because
they were first to sign up (as sometimes happens with the chapters), but
because they comprise editors who have general respect from the community
as editors. If we consider it as a kind of wiki-careerism, then it must be
a different line than the one in the chapters (like in a company, there are
managers and there are high-profile experts - in our case, chapters are
analogous to the managers, and these meta-projects are analogous to the
high-profile experts, and should generally not be mixed). 

As for the language ambassador, in principle, this is a good idea, but
then I start thinking about the details (for instance, who will be the
ambassador for the Russian language? The Russian WMF chapter does not have
sufficient respect of the community, elections probably would not lead
anywhere, the community is fractionalized and who is acceptable for one
fraction is not acceptable for another fraction, etc) - I tend to think it
is just not realistic.

Cheers
Yaroslav