Within this context, if as Pine mentions, an especially strong community organizer leaves the chapter, or if there is a huge shift in leadership, the chapter could go through a lot of growing pains, good or bad.
How exactly does the Affiliates committee support this issue? What specific support is available to chapters who are transitioning or having problems?
It seems like renaming something from X to Y is not doing much to provide solutions.
- Erika
*Erika Herzog* Wikipedia *User:BrillLyle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BrillLyle*
On Sun, Aug 21, 2016 at 1:50 AM, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
How is that damage ameliorated by, as you suggest, re-classifying a chapter as a user group?
I feel that this is a separate issue. There should be no privilege attached to already being a chapter. It is unfair to apply one set of criteria to existing chapters, and a much tighter set of criteria to aspiring chapters. Chapter status should be linked with a substantial level of current or recent activity in Wikimedia.
Chapter activity levels may decrease for many reasons, some of which are beyond their control, such as if a fire breaks out in their office, or if an especially strong community organizer leaves the country. If such things happen and the activity level or membership level of the organization decrease, it is reasonable (if not desirable) to have the organization, which now would resemble a user group rather than a chapter, actually be categorized as a user group until the organization recovers. I would call this "truth in advertising". It's not comfortable, but it is the reality, and it would give the group a strong incentive to re-energize itself and return its levels of membership and activity to the levels that it once had, rather than allowing it to keep the privileges of chapter status with few of the responsibilities and expectations.