No, the US does not need one national chapter. This has been gone over time and again. Anthony's strategy provides for a guiding body to oversee the local chapters (something that takes too much time and effort for the foundation to do, and also something they must be separate from for liability reasons), but keeps the emphasis on the local chapters, to conduct local events and local outreach, something that they can do far better than any national chapter, while national stuff can be reserved for the WMF to handle. The national guiding body also simplifies the issue of the US local chapters candidates for the 2 board seats.
It sounds great to me.
-Dan
On May 6, 2008, at 12:38 PM, Henning Schlottmann wrote:
Anthony wrote:
Here's my current thoughts on the matter, after talking with you about it privately. It's an attempt at a grassroots bottom-up strategy (which both the WMF and the chapters-to-be seem to want) which at the same time attempts to avoid constantly reinventing the wheel.
I don't see the beef. The United States don't need a number of local chapters, they need one national chapter to provide for a membership organization associated with the Wikimedia Foundation. Local groups can form under the national umbrella without being incorporated themselves.
Get the organizers of all local meetups, the Pennsylvanians, the New Yorkers and everyone else who ever made some steps to chapterhood together on a mailing list, ask around if one of the Wikipedians involved is a lawyer who can handle any questions, choose a state where to incorporate the chapter (based on locality of a few core members and the answers of your lawyer) and set up the chapter. That's not rocket science. Wikipedians usually are smart people, you should be able to get it done without any problems.
You need a charter, send it to the Foundation to have it approved, send it to the state office to have it registered, and that's about it.
Henning [[user:H-stt]]
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