On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 9:33 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
New York City is a city, and France or Germany are nations. In the geopolitical sense, the two are very different. However, in terms of chapters the geopolitical boundaries are meaningless. Chapters are defined and measured by their levels of participation. We don't say that a nation must always be "better" then a city, we say that one wikimedian is equal to one wikimedian. A Wikimedian in WMNYC who pays dues and participates is equal to a Wikimedian in Wikimedia France who pays dues and participates. To say that one group of our volunteers should be discounted because they represent a smaller area is not a good thing.
So would you suggest that votes at chapter meetings, etc., be weighted by membership? That gets rather complicated when you consider that different chapters function in different ways (different membership fees, different responsibilities of members, different classes of membership, etc). If you have one vote per chapter then it becomes completely arbitrary.
My only suggestion is that the situation is very complicated, and we cannot always say that national chapters must be more important then sub-national chapters. It's entirely conceivable that WMNYC will have more active members then some national chapters do, so why should it be counted less? Some chapters might be very large and successful, so maybe they should be weighted more. There is no way to make the system completely fair, for reasons you suggest and for others entirely. However, that doesn't mean we should draw a line in the sand and say "Wikimedians on this side of the line are more important then Wikimedians on the other side are". I would hate to see Wikimedia Chapters used as a vehicle to disenfranchise certain groups when it comes to global educational initiatives.
--Andrew Whitworth