On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 1:36 PM, daniwo59@aol.com wrote:
What is the objective of this chapter? Is it to solicit tax-free donations in the US? The WMF is already doing that with a professional, dedicated staff. Is it to negotiate with local institutions over the release of content? Again, the WMF is in the same country and is better equipped to do this. Is it to provide a membership organization that will assume responsibility for content? I doubt it. Is it to organize meetups and other social events? If so, then why go to the trouble of incorporating just to have a realtime beer with your online friends? Is it just to have a say in determining the chapter seats? Seems like a lot of trouble for that.
While I do not oppose a US chapter or even a series of local chapters, it would seem prudent to determine first what the purpose of the chapter is.
Danny
Although we are all used to interacting with the WMF all on a daily basis, I think we have to recognize that the international organization has a remarkably light footprint in the real world, even in the US, and even in our largest city, which is New York City.
We have been organizing in New York City (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_New_York_City) since November, and there are a number of activities we have started on, and clear room for much further outreach.
We already held our our first outreach event, "Wikpedia Takes Manhattan" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Takes_Manhattan) on April 4, with Columbia University and NYU students. I reached out to the WMF, but their only involvement was pointing us to O'Reilly Media as a willing donor for 'Wikipedia: The Missing Manual' books as prizes. This was certainly appreciated, but our collaborations with local Students for Free Culture groups were rather more significant to getting this event to happen. We also talked to several reporters about this event; obviously there were no official WMF representatives in place to take that role.
We've also made outreach to a local organization for the placing in free content of a Yiddish-language encyclopedia (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_New_York_City/CYCO_Yiddish_Encyclop...). There has been no involvement of the WMF in this activity either, nor is their anyone in the SF office who has a job to do such a thing.
We have also had preliminary discussions about a free content photography contest at the Brooklyn Museum.
And for the Fall, we are planning a "Wiki Week" or wikiconference, again with organizing by local Students for Free Culture groups. This will probably include another "Wikipedia Takes Manhattan", a small-scale "Wikipedia Academy", and high-profile speakers if we can get them. So far, there has been no direct WMF involvement in this initiative either (admittedly, we only started planning on Wednesday).
So, I would say there is an awful lot that local affiliates in the US can do. And the fact that we can meet in person and coordinate with other local groups on a regular basis is great contributor toward that work.
Thanks, Pharos