On 9 August 2011 18:29, geni geniice@gmail.com wrote:
On 9 August 2011 08:18, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 9 August 2011 05:13, Kirill Lokshin kirill.lokshin@gmail.com wrote:
This is all very true, and very insightful; but what does it have to do with chapters?
That the message from WMF is about a decentralisation not working from their perspective, so recentralising fundraising.
However it was the WMF that created that particular model of decentralisation in the first place.
This is begging the question: it presumes ownership. It also assumes that destroying that decentralisation is symmetrical with having first allowed and encouraged it, which is not in any way the case.
The real problem with the present approach is - *even if* it's a correct thing for the trustees to do (once we're actually clear on what it is they're doing) - is:
* Number of chapters people who've gone "hey, great idea!": 0. * Number of chapters people who've gone "you're pissing us about so badly we almost can't work with you": quite a lot.
Being on the board of a tiny nonprofit is a thankless and grinding task at the best of times. Finding people who both want to do the job and are any good at all is *not easy*.
This is a potentially catastrophic failure of volunteer liaison.
If the aim were to get rid of chapters altogether, this would have been an excellent method of achieving it.
(I don't think that is the intent - apparently WMF feels like it can mess people around and still get 100% from them. I do consider that the problems really haven't been considered.)
Let me reiterate, this is still a really big problem even if this was a 100% defensible decision by the board.
- d.