2008/5/4, Pharos pharosofalexandria@gmail.com:
On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 8:08 AM, effe iets anders effeietsanders@gmail.com wrote:
Besides the fact that this is obviously within the job description of Sue to determine (this is one of the things that the community has no say in of course, and rightfully) I also want to state that it is weird that you apperently feel such a need for the US, but not for Japan, China, Africa or Russia, which, imho, have much larger cultural and legal differences with Europe then the US...
The WMF is effectively legally managing the role of a "US chapter" already, by administering all of the trademarks in this country, etc.
I believe it would be appropriate to them to manage a "virtual chapter" also, under the person of a "Wikimedia US Affiliates Coordinator", which would represent the various Wikimedians active on-the-ground.
Possibly in the very long term "Wikimedia US" might be incorporated separately, but it would seem like a great waste of energies to establish a whole separate organization at this point.
Thanks,
Pharos
As long as there is no board, nor membership structure etc, I have a hard time seeing a group of volunteers as a chapter, even a virtual one. Of course personally I would be supportive to create such structures, but as they're not there yet, let's try to stick with the common definitions :)
What you seem to mean to me, is a group of enthusiast volunteers who want to do stuff. Yeah, the Volunteer Coordinator (Cary) might be a good point of approach then. And maybe in some cases (conferences, Wikipedia academies) the guy who is handling reachout (Frank). But the same goes for enthusiast volunteers in southern Spain, Zambia, Nepal or New Zealand. They would have to approach the same people for the same things, and I still do not see why US volunteers should take a different position on this. They are not more important, at most higher in number (although that would have to proof itself first).
As soon as there are legal entities (or at least groups with formalized structures) in the US, incorporated or not, I guess their point of approach would be the chapters coordinator (Delphine) / chapters committee . As long as you're not, I think that the regular current structures should be sufficient (because you're no "affiliate" anyways)..
BR, Lodewijk