On Oct 19, 2015, at 12:56 AM, Pine W
<wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Manuel,
Can you clarify what you mean by "limited liability" for user groups? I
think you mean limited responsibilities as far as WMF is concerned. As far
as the United States authorities are concerned, we have plenty of paperwork
that we're expected to deal with, particularly if we're handling funds
and/or hosting public events. Most of the paperwork is the same whether
there are 5 people or 500 people involved, so it's a pretty complex
operation, particularly if volunteers are dealing with all of this with no
paid help. I had some experience with business law prior to my involvement
in Cascadia Wikimedians, and even with that background I'm finding that
there is a lot to learn and a lot of paperwork to deal with in order to
keep our user group on solid legal ground.
Pine
On Sun, Oct 18, 2015 at 10:05 AM, Schneider, Manuel <
manuel.schneider(a)wikimedia.ch> wrote:
Hi Ilario,
it is the will of the board to make it easy to start a recognised body to
do work and it is totally acceptable if these bodies also die after having
fulfilled their purpose - or grow and develop into other affiliation
models. So the criterium for us is easy entry.
Anyway the user groups have limited liability and responsibilities, access
to ressources is controlled on a case by case basis eg. through the Grant
Avisory Committee and every year user groups must be renewed, for this we
want so see a simple report. So every ug with the minimum of activity - a
report written, having responded to our follow-up e-mail - is renewed.
/Manuel
--
sent from mobile phoneAm 18.10.2015 4:46 nachm. schrieb Ilario Valdelli <
valdelli(a)gmail.com>gt;:
I personally think that the main concern, in this proliferation of
groups, is an lack of the implementation of a "good governance".
A user group is like a body, it can born, can develop and can die.
At the moment there is an unclear guideline about the monitoring and the
development of these groups: they can only born.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_user_groups
Basically the affiliation committee creates these entities, but don't
monitor them and don't evaluate to retire (or the best would be to
freeze) some old entities when they become essentially inactive or
silent.
In this case the balance would be compensated and the proliferation of
these groups would have a sense.
Kind regards
On 18.10.2015 16:48, Gregory Varnum wrote:
> The Affiliations Committee (AffCom) has been preparing for the
increased
momentum since the user group model was implemented, and it
follows a pattern that we’ve been seeing over the past couple of years. In
2013, we approved 10 user groups, last year we approved 19, and so far this
year we have approved around 20. That number will likely increase next
year. This growing momentum is why we have continued to tweak the approval
process to be faster and able to handle the growing momentum. So, from our
perspective, this is something we have been preparing for from the start,
and not a surprise.
>
> Personally, I think further complicating affiliate classifications is
a bad
idea. “Small” and “larger” are very culturally relative, varies
across the models (there are user groups “larger” than chapters), changes
over time, and implies that “large” affiliates do work “small” affiliates
cannot, when we continue to see that is in fact not the case at all. The
current criteria for WMCON is active and inactive, which seems far more
appropriate. Additionally, dividing them will not save much money, if any,
as there would still presumably be a gathering for the “small” affiliates.
>
> I agree with Leigh and others that affiliates should receive more
support, but
I do not think those efforts will be served well by further
dividing them.
-greg (User:Varnent)
Vice Chair, Wikimedia Affiliations Committee
--
Ilario Valdelli
Wikimedia CH
Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre
Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera
Switzerland - 8008 Zürich
Tel: +41764821371
http://www.wikimedia.ch
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