Certainly, in the last 2 years and before, a handful of Wikimedia volunteer groups have been quite as active and organized as those currently being classified as User Groups - only the option of being recognized as User Groups did not exist for them at the time of their founding.
And it is a good thing that this category exists now, but is seems wrong to penalize Wikimedia volunteer groups that *do* have a track record of effective programmatic experience, just because they were started before the User Group category was in existence.
Thanks, Richard (User:Pharos)
On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 12:33 AM, phoebe ayers phoebe.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Hi all,
I want to draw your attention to two Wikimedia Board of Trustees decisions that were recently published, regarding funds allocated to the FDC/Annual plan grant process and Board approval of chapter/thematic organization status. In a nutshell, the Board decided to allocate approximately the same amount of funding to the FDC for the next two years. The Board also decided that new organizations should first form as a user group and have two years of programmatic experience before being approved as a legally incorporated entity (either a chapter or thematic organization).
The decisions are published in the meeting minutes here: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Minutes/2013-11-24#Movement_roles
There is also a FAQ on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_roles_FAQ
You will notice these decisions are published in the minutes for the November meeting. We originally took these decisions at that meeting; however as the FAQ explains it took us some time to talk to community groups, clarify our wording and write the FAQ.
Hopefully the FAQ will answer many of your questions about these decisions; however, if there are other questions please do ask them, here or on the meta talk page. Thank you!
for the Board, Phoebe _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe