Tomasz Ganicz, 14/10/2012 22:36:
2012/10/14 James Heilman:
Thematic organizations have the same amount of authority over content on Wikipedia as chapters. To spell this out clearly that means NONE. One does not put these sorts of details in a NGOs by laws however this will be clearly described in the policies once incorporated.
Authority - none - but as the main goal of chapters is just to support Wikimedia projects and communities as a whole rather without any direct influence over project's content or rules of the projects, thematic associations are clearly about the content of projects as such. If Wikimedia Medicine activity had no any impact over medical content of Wikipedias there would not have any sense to have such organization :-)
By the way that's also the point of the discussion on en.wiki mentioned by Bence.[1] (Again, I'm just taking this as an example.) This is exactly why thematic organisations need not a less clear, but a more clear, general rule/line of demarcation than chapters. Now that I think of it, you'll also need something about the visibility you can get on Wikimedia projects: sitenotices, notices of all sort, even just templates "this article/whatever was supported/provided/rubberstamped by entity X" tend to be subject to controversies. ChapCom/AffCom will know better and you can build on years of experience of chapters. ;-)
Nemo
[1] Permanent link: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Iridescent&oldid=516388768#arbitrary_break_2
Where doubts like «it will become a meta-arbitration committee for medical issues» are raised.