*headdesk* Wikiconference USA, not Wikimedia Conference. Apologies to our friends in WMDE.
On Sun, Oct 18, 2015 at 10:38 PM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I think the issue is with the word "liability". That has a legal meaning to me that perhaps it wouldn't to others.
It's a bit of a misunderstanding that user groups "are not required to become legal entities". We would be a legal entity whether or not we registered; we'd simply be an unincorporated association if we didn't register. That is indeed much simpler, but it comes with its own set of risks. I don't want to get into a lengthy discussion of the legal issues here, but let's just say that it's not a zero-cost and zero-risk approach.
That's a good point that there's a disjuncture between the kind of activities that a group does and the affiliations model. For example, a chapter could be quite small and a user group can be quite large, and there is some flex in the issues that each will experience.
I'm happy to talk off-list about the legal issues if you wish. My head is pretty packed with it, since I've been dealing with a lot of it over the past few months as we're trying to scale up our activities and we're looking at hosting the Wikimedia Conference next year. As you say, other groups with different kinds of activities and ambitions might choose to take a different and less careful approach. For example, a college Wikipedia club with limited growth ambitions may have a lot less to think about than we do.
I feel like I'm getting muddled in my explanation so I'll stop here and just say that I'm happy to continue this conversation off list. Hopefully we can get back to the discussion about affiliate user groups and mentoring in general.
On Sun, Oct 18, 2015 at 10:27 PM, Gregory Varnum <gregory.varnum@gmail.com
wrote:
It is limited liability on both parts, meaning that user groups are not required to become legal entities, or maintain the higher reporting and capacity requirements that chapters and thematic organizations are required to maintain.
The considerations that you are mentioning are tied to your activities and not your status as a user group. It is a misleading and discouraging to others to imply that running a user group in the United States requires all of that liability and workload. User groups are not required to become legal entities (which Cascadia has opted to do), and can be as simple as a student club at a university. In other words, not all user groups are alike. The level of liability is tied to the activities the group engages in, not the affiliations model.
-greg (User:Varnent) Vice Chair, Affiliations Committee
On Oct 19, 2015, at 12:56 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Manuel,
Can you clarify what you mean by "limited liability" for user groups? I think you mean limited responsibilities as far as WMF is concerned. As
far
as the United States authorities are concerned, we have plenty of
paperwork
that we're expected to deal with, particularly if we're handling funds and/or hosting public events. Most of the paperwork is the same whether there are 5 people or 500 people involved, so it's a pretty complex operation, particularly if volunteers are dealing with all of this with
no
paid help. I had some experience with business law prior to my
involvement
in Cascadia Wikimedians, and even with that background I'm finding that there is a lot to learn and a lot of paperwork to deal with in order to keep our user group on solid legal ground.
Pine
On Sun, Oct 18, 2015 at 10:05 AM, Schneider, Manuel < manuel.schneider@wikimedia.ch> wrote:
Hi Ilario,
it is the will of the board to make it easy to start a recognised body
to
do work and it is totally acceptable if these bodies also die after
having
fulfilled their purpose - or grow and develop into other affiliation models. So the criterium for us is easy entry.
Anyway the user groups have limited liability and responsibilities,
access
to ressources is controlled on a case by case basis eg. through the
Grant
Avisory Committee and every year user groups must be renewed, for this
we
want so see a simple report. So every ug with the minimum of activity
- a
report written, having responded to our follow-up e-mail - is renewed.
/Manuel
-- sent from mobile phoneAm 18.10.2015 4:46 nachm. schrieb Ilario
Valdelli <
valdelli@gmail.com>:
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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