Ilario,
I agree that I would like to see more proactive mentoring and support. Some
user groups may get born and die in ways that are fine. But others that are
very promising for growth may wilt away due to lack of nurturing and
support. I get the impression that Affcom itself is short on volunteer time
to do mentoring, so I would like to see more proactive support from WMF.
Pine
On Sun, Oct 18, 2015 at 8:46 AM, Ilario Valdelli <valdelli(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I personally think that the main concern, in this
proliferation of groups,
is an lack of the implementation of a "good governance".
A user group is like a body, it can born, can develop and can die.
At the moment there is an unclear guideline about the monitoring and the
development of these groups: they can only born.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_user_groups
Basically the affiliation committee creates these entities, but don't
monitor them and don't evaluate to retire (or the best would be to freeze)
some old entities when they become essentially inactive or silent.
In this case the balance would be compensated and the proliferation of
these groups would have a sense.
Kind regards
On 18.10.2015 16:48, Gregory Varnum wrote:
The Affiliations Committee (AffCom) has been
preparing for the increased
momentum since the user group model was implemented, and it follows a
pattern that we’ve been seeing over the past couple of years. In 2013, we
approved 10 user groups, last year we approved 19, and so far this year we
have approved around 20. That number will likely increase next year. This
growing momentum is why we have continued to tweak the approval process to
be faster and able to handle the growing momentum. So, from our
perspective, this is something we have been preparing for from the start,
and not a surprise.
Personally, I think further complicating affiliate classifications is a
bad idea. “Small” and “larger” are very culturally relative, varies across
the models (there are user groups “larger” than chapters), changes over
time, and implies that “large” affiliates do work “small” affiliates
cannot, when we continue to see that is in fact not the case at all. The
current criteria for WMCON is active and inactive, which seems far more
appropriate. Additionally, dividing them will not save much money, if any,
as there would still presumably be a gathering for the “small” affiliates.
I agree with Leigh and others that affiliates should receive more
support, but I do not think those efforts will be served well by further
dividing them.
-greg (User:Varnent)
Vice Chair, Wikimedia Affiliations Committee
--
Ilario Valdelli
Wikimedia CH
Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens
Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre
Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera
Switzerland - 8008 Zürich
Tel: +41764821371
http://www.wikimedia.ch
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