2009/9/12 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
While I don't doubt that the Portuguese Wikimedians are acting in good faith, trust requires two things - good faith and competence. They are almost certainly not competent since they haven't had an opportunity to develop that competence yet, so they should not be trusted to be making the right decisions.
I'm a bit worried about this sort of approach. Taken to extremes, we wouldn't let the local chapter organise itself at all, because clearly none of them would know how to do it until after they've had experience running it, etc etc etc.
People will make bad decisions, estimates, projections, guesses, conclusions sometimes; it happens. We spot them the second time around, once we've realised they're wrong, fix them, and move on.