Hello Pine,
Although we cannot commit to a systematic 14-day response time for all
inquiries, I do think that would be reasonable for routine inquiries,
depending on the amount of collaboration outside of the legal department.
As mentioned, AffCom is independent from the legal department, so I cannot
make a commitment for them, but AffCom has made a few recent changes that
aim to improve the process for user groups overall. I think that the legal
team does respond well within 14 days for the vast majority of inquiries
that we receive, and we will reemphasize the importance of this point with
our attorneys at our next biweekly legal meeting.
The legal team does not publish our quarterly goals because we do not want
to show our strategy to adverse parties, such as cases where we litigate to
defend WMF or to support the defense of users. That said, our public goals
are linked to standard ongoing workflows, much of which you can find in the
WMF's FDC proposal (
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round2/Wikim…
).
Best,
Stephen
On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 11:42 AM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Nemo, Cascadia Wikimedians' current discussions
with Affcom and WMF
Legal are about some wording on the Affiliation Agreement document. We have
not discussed becoming a chapter in any great detail, and as you note the
WMF Board created a longevity requirement. We have had informal meetings in
Cascadia for such a long time that I wonder if the WMF Board would consider
a waiver in our case, but so far I think being a user group will be
adequate for our needs in the near future.
Hi Asaf, thanks for the info. I have previously heard comments from other
affiliates about Affcom taking a long time to make decisions, but until now
investigating that has been low on my priority stack.
Pine
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Stephen LaPorte
Legal Counsel
Wikimedia Foundation
*NOTICE: As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal and ethical
reasons, I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community
members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more
on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer>.*