Dear all,
Allow me, from my personal experiences, to bring into conscience what it means to "be" or to represent a Wikimedia affiliate, whether it is a chapter, a thematic organization or a WM user group.
It is a great honour to be active in a Wikimedia affiliate.
Affiliates, a chapter for example, are trusted with the use of important trademarks and logos. For many people who are unfamiliar with the movement, a chapter is the first contact point with everything regarding "Wikipedia". Government and other institutions cooperate with chapters. The people responsible in a chapter have to decide on budgets and reglements and many other things, with effect to people inside and outside the chapter.
But what if a chapter fails?
Think of a museum that wants to cooperate with "Wikipedia" in a specific language, and approaches the chapter related. If the chapter fails to reply, if the museum never gets an answer of any kind even after several attempts via different communication channels - that is a catastrophe for the reputation of the chapter, but also for the Wikipedia language version in question.
Or think of a volunteer who wants to organize something on an international scale, and invites other chapters (and affiliates) to join. What if her inclusionist approach is rewarded with deafening silence because chapter representants are inactive but too proud to admit that?
I am a member of WMNL and WMDE. But even if I were not, these organizations and the WMF represent me and my work on Wikipedia to the outside world. I want them to be accountable to minimum standards - I think that I deserve that as a Wikipedia volunteer. And I want to travel to other countries and meet museum people and hear from them: "Wikimedia? Yes, we work together with a Wikimedia user group here, those folks do great a great job."
It cannot be surprising that I was very happy to read Carlos' mail. I'm not sure whether we are quite there yet, and one issue remains how to effectively support affiliates even more, and how to provide appropriate resources. But - whether such investions make sense depends also from the affiliate.
Kind regards Ziko
Am Donnerstag, 25. August 2016 schrieb Delphine Ménard :
On 24 August 2016 at 22:50, Michael Peel <email@mikepeel.net javascript:;> wrote:
This process seems to be very harsh as written. For example, it says: "an organization’s recognition may be terminated immediately
according to the group's agreement (without Board review or appeal)"
There's no mention of any sort of ombudsperson, or appeal process in
this document. Presumably this is delegated to the individual group agreements, but it would be good to see that explicitly mentioned in this process document. There are other examples elsewhere in the process that I won't go into here. But I think this process needs rewriting to make it fairer to all parties.
I don't think it's harsh. Experience proves that "trying to get in touch" and "trying to put together a plan" is a very lengthy process, and takes months, if not years. In short, every attempt I have seen at actually making sure a chapter / group was really inexistent before entering the last phase of derecognition has been more than thorough (from many emails to activating personal contacts to everything you can think of to get in touch with people). You do have to draw the line somewhere though, and at some point get "harsh" and have hard deadlines. An appeal process would mean having someone at the other end of the line. More often than not, this is not the case. I think it's important that we know to "terminate", because dormant entities often prevent new people from rekindling motivation and starting anew.
Best,
Delphine
-- @notafish
NB. This gmail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails will get lost. Intercultural musings: Ceci n'est pas une endive - http://blog.notanendive.org Photos with simple eyes: notaphoto - http://photo.notafish.org
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