Hi Paulo,
Camelia's paragraph that you referred to tells a story that is exactly the opposite of what the Affiliations Committee is doing in practice. The so-called 'Brazilian scenario' emerged in Macedonia when, in 2016, the committee decided to recognise a second user group on the same territory without consulting the existing one. This has eventually developed into a problem regarding the overlap in the scope of the two user groups and the resolution was normally sought from the people (more importantly volunteers) who were not willing this to happen. It should be also noted that Macedonia is a country with only 2 million inhabitants unlike Brazil's over 200 million and this has been mentioned numerous times by different people in the movement to refer to the severity of the problem.
My opinion is that the Affiliations Committee has no vision on the future of the Wikimedia movement and their main efficiency indicator is the number of user groups they recognise with no care about the consequencies of the apparent wrongdoing. They managed to bring the tally to over 100 user groups and the Wikimedia Foundation even got engaged to celebrate this achievement, while they did not give a damn about the problems that they have posed with their light-minded routine. Moreover, when you approach them with some relevant questions, they simply brush off and respond with a months-long delay.
In conclusion, the Affiliations Committee is artificially creating problems as a result of their recognition policy and is seeking resolution from volunteers that were not consulted at all about the potential consequencies. This is a waste of volunteer time and efforts for something that could have easily been prevented. Unfortunately, the Wikimedia Foundation and some other voices in the movement contribute to this misery and it is highly unprobable that any complaint to any one in the movement would pay off.
Best regards, Kiril
On сре., 13 фев. 2019 г. at 16:13 Paulo Santos Perneta < paulosperneta@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,
camelia boban camelia.boban@gmail.com escreveu no dia terça, 12/02/2019 à(s) 11:18:
(...) In line with the philosophy of the inclusion of the movement, AffCom has acted as it always does when it receives affiliation requests: it
assesses
the territorial overlap and the declared purpose of the requests with others affiliates present in the territory, contacting the already recognized affiliates to hear from them about any concerns, using the experience and knowledge on the territory of each of its members.
I suppose this was not in effect back in 2015, when Wiki Education Brazil was approved, as neither the existing affiliate in Brazil - UG Wikimedia in Brazil -, nor Wikimedia Portugal, have been consulted about it, even when it totally overlapped with the territory of the existing affiliate in Brazil, and was announced by AffCom as having a Lusophone target, therefore interfering in Portugal as well. Furthermore, at the date it was approved, Wiki Education Brazil was already in open conflict with the existing affiliate in Brazil, which makes the approval decision by AffCom absolutely incomprehensible.
Actually, I really fail to understand why the candidatures to AffCom continue allowed to be proposed in absolute secrecy, leaving any problems caused by their approvals to be dealt with by the community after the problem is already installed. Does not seem a very clever way of acting.
Best,
Paulo - DarwIn Wikimedia Portugal _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe