Dan Rosenthal wrote:
On Jan 21, 2009, at 2:13 AM, Florence Devouard wrote:
Nathan wrote:
On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 5:52 PM, Erik Moeller
<erik(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
2009/1/20 Ting Chen <wing.philopp(a)gmx.de>de>:
> Not quite. One criteria is that the chapters should have well
> defined
> geographical areas and they should not overlap. So an Amsterdam
> chapter
> beside a Dutch chapter is not possible.
>
It was my understanding from the sub-national chapters document that
such chapters might be permitted to form anyway:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Sub-national_chapters
(Question: "Aren't we setting up sub-national chapters to compete
for
funding with nation-based chapters?")
What I'm taking your statement to mean is that when a subnational
chapter is formed where a national chapter could be later formed,
the
overlap and potential harmful consequences of such overlap would
have
to be carefully considered before national chapter is approved.
Would
that be a fair characterization? Or are you meaning 'is not
possible'
truly in the sense of 'will never happen'?
Earlier in this thread, Ting clearly stated that recognition of a
sub-national chapter meant a national chapter could not later be
formed.
Andrew Whitworth indicated the same. Is that not the definitive
answer to
the question?
Nathan
This would be real bad, because it could exclude entire areas that do
not drain sufficient memberships or funds to be able to really
create a
sustainable chapter.
That could be typically the case of a country with two big cities
and a
big rural area. Two chapters could be created in each city, leaving
all
wikipedians in the rural areas helpless. If such was to happen, I hope
WMF would either accept the creation of a national chapter, or
negotiate
with the city-chapters so that they can extend membership to
neighbours.
Note that this is already the case for many national chapters. In the
French one, we host a couple of people living in Switzerland ('cause
they are French in nationality), as well as from Belgium and
Luxembourg,
('cause these nations have no chapter).
I suspect a consensus will need to be found, so that 1) no harm is
made
to current chapter and 2) no one be excluded which would defeat the
process.
As such, flexibility should be a must.
Ant
I agree with your concern here Florence, but I don't see anything
saying that national chapters cannot form if there is a sub national
chapter there. I don't quite know where Ting extrapolates "chapters
should have well defined geographical areas and they should not
overlap" into "If we have a sub national chapter, we cannot have a
parent national chapter"; it sounds like a misreading of "Should not"
into "Must not".
I can think of several good reasons why sub-national chapters should
not preclude a national chapter; not the least of which being the
concerns raised by Florence, but also situations in places such as
China where subnational chapters in one area of the country may not
adequately represent the rest of the country.
Was this some sort of unilateral proclamation by Ting, or has the
chapters committee officially made some sort of decision on this topic?
-Dan
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
This is my conclusion out of the "no overlapping areas" criteria. I
may
be wrong. I don't think that the concern of Florence is really a serious
one. In many countries, for example Agentina, where we already have a
chapter, a few cities are the absolute cultural center of the country,
but in these cases there's no sense to constrain a chapter only in the
cities. They can easily be established as national chapters, like
Agentina. Another example is NYC is not constrained in the city, but has
its area including the whole state. At the moment we have no cases where
we have conflicts here, and I see no situation, which cannot be
negotiated by one way or the other. Last but not least, if there are
indeed grave conflicts and it is unsoluble according to the current
rule, I don't see that rules are unchangable. We have come so far and
have solved so much problems I don't think that we would one day die on
this problem.
Greetings
Ting