On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 5:52 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
It was my understanding from the sub-national chapters document that such chapters might be permitted to form anyway: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Sub-national_chapters (Question: "Aren't we setting up sub-national chapters to compete for funding with nation-based chapters?")
The sub-national chapters document did hint that overlapping wasn't a problem, but enough "what if" disaster scenarios have been suggested that we are probably not going to approve any overlapping chapters anyway. At least, not yet.
What I'm taking your statement to mean is that when a subnational chapter is formed where a national chapter could be later formed, the overlap and potential harmful consequences of such overlap would have to be carefully considered before national chapter is approved. Would that be a fair characterization? Or are you meaning 'is not possible' truly in the sense of 'will never happen'?
I suspect it's not "will never happen", but instead is "should only happen after very careful consideration and agreement". If there is a country with an existing sub-national chapter and an organization effort to create a national one, I think we would all suggest that the subnational chapter redefine it's region to become a national chapter, instead of allowing two separate groups to overlap. Even if it's not a "problem", it still seems like a needless waste of effort for two groups to be doing the same things in the same region.
--Andrew Whitworth