2008/5/4, Pharos <pharosofalexandria(a)gmail.com>om>:
On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 8:08 AM, effe iets anders
<effeietsanders(a)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