--- Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
Question : what do you do ?
Thanks for answering Mav
We need to first look at the formation of the German chapter/association in order to develop rules and procedures for setting up chapters. Once that is done we could refer the person to that documentation and provide assistance as needed.
Nod. That rejoin Angela suggestion to set a page on meta to "start a local chapter".
This said, that seems to imply that the German association is a good model.
There would, at the least, have to be enough
dues-paying Wikimedia members in that person's area in order to make it possible to have a viable chapter.
That is an interesting point. Is it mandatory that there are enough dues-paying members, or would not it be more important that there are enough motivated people in that country ? It is not necessary mandatory that money is collected from members, however, it is essential that enough motivated people set and manage the association properly ihmo
Once that is the case, and enough of those
members indicate a willingness to actually participate in a chapter, then the foundation could provide some seed money to set-up the legal framework.
Yes, I fully agree with this. It would be good that Wikimedia foundation provides the starting money, rather than that foundators of the association are asked to pay on top of their free work for this to proceed. I am dubious of the move that *requires* people to pay to participate to Wikimedia distribution
Then to stay a Wikimedia
chapter a *minimal* set of guidelines must be adhered to (such as keeping a certain set number of active chapter members and reporting chapter-specific finances and activities to the foundation).
It would be probably enough to have all associations agree to follow Wikimedia mission status. Which is why I proposed that this one is carefull reviewed, so that we could weave proper links between all associations
I would
also like to see each chapter president have at least a honorary role in the foundation itself (perhaps even as honoray trustees).
I think it would be correct that some of the money collected by the chapter goes to the Foundation, if only to participate to our common frame (servers, bandwith...). But then it is certainly fair, that local chapter participate to the decisions in terms of budget.
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