On 5/24/06, arnomane@gmx.de arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
Why not creating a Wikimedia chapter that is a community asociation of croatian, serbian, serbo-croatian ... Wikipedias and which is thus trying to care about all of them?
Because, as stated in the Chapters FAQ, chapters have a country base, on the contrary to projects. At some point, you need a legal form of some kind, and as far as I know, there is no such thing as a legal form that would allow the creation of a Germano-Swiss-Austrian chapter, just because they all speak German, or a Franco-Canadian-Blegian-Swiss chapter. It'd have to be legally based somewhere.
I think the debate is drifting from a purely legal thing, ie. the country is now called "Serbia" and not "Serbia and Montenegro" to a trial of intention (that's a French word - procès d'intention) to the Serbians for having to change their name.
It's not their fault, it doesn't mean that Montenegrans are not welcome in the Serbian chapter, or Croats for that matter, until they also have a legal frame to which they can attach. It does not mean either that once all formed, those chapters will not work on common projects such as "The Balkan Wikimedia project" or some such.
It's life. Wikimedia "Deutschland" is called Wikimedia "Deutschland" and it operates in "Deutschland". The name does not prevent it from working together with a future Austrian chapter or with the new born Swiss chapter. On the contrary. Working towards a similar goal creates bridges and ties across countries, languages and cultures that may be very or slightly different and that learn from each other, from their mistakes and their successes.
Imposing names or cooperation on chapters that form in different parts of the world just because we think it's *nicer* is, in my opinion, not the way to go.
Delphine