Hello
Will we keep one Serbia and Montenogro chapter or will the current chapter separate in two ?
Ant
On 5/23/06, Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Hello
Will we keep one Serbia and Montenogro chapter or will the current chapter separate in two ?
They're probably going to have to be called Wikimedia Serbia and change the name accordingly. There are legal procedures to go through before this is effective, so it might take a little time.
As far as I know, the chapters is composed of Serbians only at this time.
Best
Delphine Chair Chapters Committee
Anthere wrote:
Hello
Will we keep one Serbia and Montenogro chapter or will the current chapter separate in two ?
Or, as I would advocate, have one chapter for Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, and Bosnia... if at all possible.
Very idealistic Jimbo.
Fred
On May 23, 2006, at 3:49 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Anthere wrote:
Hello
Will we keep one Serbia and Montenogro chapter or will the current chapter separate in two ?
Or, as I would advocate, have one chapter for Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, and Bosnia... if at all possible.
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Fred Bauder wrote:
Very idealistic Jimbo.
Well, remember, I have been there, and I have met Serbian and Croatian Wikipedians. They are... like Wikipedians everywhere. Friendly people, interested in sharing knowledge. :-)
Jimmy Wales wrote:
Fred Bauder wrote:
Very idealistic Jimbo.
Well, remember, I have been there, and I have met Serbian and Croatian Wikipedians. They are... like Wikipedians everywhere. Friendly people, interested in sharing knowledge. :-)
And that's all there is. We're all interested in sharing knowledge, but not the projects. People just don't wanna cooperate and you just can't force them. I think ongoing flame/revert wars at English Wikipedia speak for themselves. Remember, being somewhere and living somewhere are two very different things. :) Filip
Am Mittwoch, 24. Mai 2006 03:37 schrieb Filip Maljkovic:
And that's all there is. We're all interested in sharing knowledge, but not the projects. People just don't wanna cooperate and you just can't force them. I think ongoing flame/revert wars at English Wikipedia speak for themselves.
Well. Random Wikipedians coming from Serbia and Croatia or some other former yugoslav republic and flaming against each other is no surprise but the people that are active members in Wikimedia chapters should be way more resonable.
As Wikipedia is a mutilingual open minded community it would be just very anachronistic not working together across borders. And additionally there is no real language barrier for example between Serbs and Croats. For example the Serbian and Croatian language are much more similar than the various German dialects (that have in fact a large variety).
So what does speak against a shared Wikimedia chapter in that region apart barriers in mind and maybe some legal problems with establishing a multinational chapter (I am sure there is a way how to solve it)?
So I want to say: Open mind does not start with being open minded towards people that live in nations several thousands kilometers away but with being open minded towards the direct neighbours.
Why not creating a Wikimedia chapter that is a community asociation of croatian, serbian, serbo-croatian ... Wikipedias and which is thus trying to care about all of them?
Arnomane
On 5/24/06, arnomane@gmx.de arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
Why not creating a Wikimedia chapter that is a community asociation of croatian, serbian, serbo-croatian ... Wikipedias and which is thus trying to care about all of them?
Because, as stated in the Chapters FAQ, chapters have a country base, on the contrary to projects. At some point, you need a legal form of some kind, and as far as I know, there is no such thing as a legal form that would allow the creation of a Germano-Swiss-Austrian chapter, just because they all speak German, or a Franco-Canadian-Blegian-Swiss chapter. It'd have to be legally based somewhere.
I think the debate is drifting from a purely legal thing, ie. the country is now called "Serbia" and not "Serbia and Montenegro" to a trial of intention (that's a French word - procès d'intention) to the Serbians for having to change their name.
It's not their fault, it doesn't mean that Montenegrans are not welcome in the Serbian chapter, or Croats for that matter, until they also have a legal frame to which they can attach. It does not mean either that once all formed, those chapters will not work on common projects such as "The Balkan Wikimedia project" or some such.
It's life. Wikimedia "Deutschland" is called Wikimedia "Deutschland" and it operates in "Deutschland". The name does not prevent it from working together with a future Austrian chapter or with the new born Swiss chapter. On the contrary. Working towards a similar goal creates bridges and ties across countries, languages and cultures that may be very or slightly different and that learn from each other, from their mistakes and their successes.
Imposing names or cooperation on chapters that form in different parts of the world just because we think it's *nicer* is, in my opinion, not the way to go.
Delphine
Delphine Ménard wrote:
Imposing names or cooperation on chapters that form in different parts of the world just because we think it's *nicer* is, in my opinion, not the way to go.
I agree, just to be clear. I think that in this part of the world, there are good reasons why many local people will want to try to have a broad umbrella organization. Contrary to media stereotypes, Serbians and Croatians do not all irrationally hate each other. Many Wikipedians in the area have expressed a desire that Wikipedia be a neutral place to rise above all that, and I think they are very interested in making sure that whatever legal structure is adopted does not artificially create divisions and conflicts.
As it stands at the moment, I think this is mostly an artificial question, since in fact I think we don't currently have anything like a critical mass of people in Montenegro to do anything at all.
--Jimbo
On 5/24/06, Delphine Ménard notafishz@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/24/06, arnomane@gmx.de arnomane@gmx.de wrote:
Why not creating a Wikimedia chapter that is a community asociation of croatian, serbian, serbo-croatian ... Wikipedias and which is thus trying to care about all of them?
Because, as stated in the Chapters FAQ, chapters have a country base, on the contrary to projects. At some point, you need a legal form of some kind, and as far as I know, there is no such thing as a legal form that would allow the creation of a Germano-Swiss-Austrian chapter, just because they all speak German, or a Franco-Canadian-Blegian-Swiss chapter. It'd have to be legally based somewhere.
[snip]
This is the crucial point - the legal existence of our local chapters. We had this debate within Wikimedia UK, and whether it was desirable to to create a Wikimedia British Isles (or whatever it would be called) - a geographical region where we all speak the same language (as well as others). I thought then (and still think) that it would be nice to have such a thing - but the thing was that it would have been, legally, very difficult, if not impossible to create it. Even more obscurely, because of the UK's bizarre legal system, we are, technically, actually bound by the laws of England and Wales - not Scotland and/or Northern Ireland (if I have understood this correctly). What I hope will happen, again echoing Delphine, is that a Wikimedia Ireland chapter will be formed, which will work with Wikimedia UK on issues of common interest, not least our cultural and lingual heritage.
Cormac
I don't believe that the mass of the persons could decide of the fate of the own nation, frequently (or all the time?) the decisions are in the hands of little groups where the friendship has no weight.
Ilario
Well, remember, I have been there, and I have met Serbian and Croatian Wikipedians. They are... like Wikipedians everywhere. Friendly people, interested in sharing knowledge. :-)
If you can pull that of I will personally send an email to the nobel peace prize foundation and to the UN for a prize and for you to become the secretary general.
Waerth/Walter
Very idealistic Jimbo.
Fred
On May 23, 2006, at 3:49 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Anthere wrote:
Hello
Will we keep one Serbia and Montenogro chapter or will the current chapter separate in two ?
Or, as I would advocate, have one chapter for Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, and Bosnia... if at all possible.
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Walter van Kalken napisał(a):
If you can pull that of I will personally send an email to the nobel peace prize foundation and to the UN for a prize and for you to become the secretary general.
I thought somebody did that already... ;)
But seriously now... Why the irony, Walter? There is a saying (or is it a quote?) which goes more or less like this: "A given thing cannot be done until somebody who doesn't know it cannot be done comes along. And that somebody does it." We're writing an on-line encyclopedia. And it works, it grows. and... it was impossible. Or at least it was thought to be.
Now... Imagine we're a bunch of people who don't know the first thing about anything. ;) World peace? Piece of cake. Wikipedia on Mars? Just wait and see. Alpha Centauri by 2050? Well... That might be a problem. But not because we can't. We can and we will if we want to, just not by any set date. Because we don't (and can't) really keep dates. But if you look at things in the long term (and I do mean long) you'll see it'll all work out fine in the end. That is how wiki works, right? Eventually every page will get better and better and better. Same goes for the real world (at least for us optimists).
And we *will* have these different chapters mentioned up and running and working together... someday.
On 5/23/06, Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
Or, as I would advocate, have one chapter for Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, and Bosnia... if at all possible.
Having a chapter for each country can have advantages in organization and perception. Split chapters do not necessarily mean split efforts. The question is, how do chapters cooperate best on an ad hoc basis? Setting up meta-organization(s) tied to regions would be one way, but I'm inclined to think that would be too much bureaucracy and too static. Simply using a wiki and mailing lists for cross-chapter cooperation probably works best.
Erik
Let's shoot for a single Wikipedia and multiple chapters, not the other way around.
Austin
--- Anthere Anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
Hello
Will we keep one Serbia and Montenogro chapter or will the current chapter separate in two ?
Chapters are supposed to be nation-based, no? So it would not make much sense to have two different chapters until Serbia and Montenegro actually become two different nations with different governments and laws, etc (the vote is just the first step). What would be neat, however, would be the existence of a supra-national organization that could coordinate the activities of different national chapters in the same region. Wikimedia Europa, for example, and/or even smaller coordinating bodies such as Wikimedia Balkans.
-- mav
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On 5/24/06, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
What would be neat, however, would be the existence of a supra-national organization that could coordinate the activities of different national chapters in the same region. Wikimedia Europa, for example, and/or even smaller coordinating bodies such as Wikimedia Balkans.
That was my first thought, too, but I don't think this direction is necessarily right. First of all, you end up with another legal body with another to-be-(s)elected group of representatives: more bureaucracy. More importantly, cooperations between chapters are likely going to be an "ad hoc" thing: - "Let's have an Eastern Europe meeting." - "Let's cooperate between DE and AT for a media campaign." - "Let's start a metadata project for digitized documents in Croatian and Serbian." - "Let's approach a Commonwealth organization for a grant."
They can be derived from languages, regions, political associations, history, personal contacts, etc. Unless you want "meta-organizations" that model all these potential points of contact between chapters, I think what is really needed is simply efficient cross-chapter communication. In cases where you would want to say "Organized by Wikimedia Europe", you can instead say "Organized by the Wikimedia chapters of Europe". Where you need a single central organization to receive money, you can use the WMF.
Is there a real need for anything else?
Erik
On 5/24/06, Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
On 5/24/06, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
What would be neat, however, would be the existence of a supra-national organization that could coordinate the activities of different national chapters in the same region. Wikimedia Europa, for example, and/or even smaller coordinating bodies such as Wikimedia Balkans.
That was my first thought, too, but I don't think this direction is necessarily right. First of all, you end up with another legal body with another to-be-(s)elected group of representatives: more bureaucracy. More importantly, cooperations between chapters are likely going to be an "ad hoc" thing:
- "Let's have an Eastern Europe meeting."
- "Let's cooperate between DE and AT for a media campaign."
- "Let's start a metadata project for digitized documents in Croatian
and Serbian."
- "Let's approach a Commonwealth organization for a grant."
They can be derived from languages, regions, political associations, history, personal contacts, etc. Unless you want "meta-organizations" that model all these potential points of contact between chapters, I think what is really needed is simply efficient cross-chapter communication. In cases where you would want to say "Organized by Wikimedia Europe", you can instead say "Organized by the Wikimedia chapters of Europe". Where you need a single central organization to receive money, you can use the WMF.
Is there a real need for anything else?
There might be at some point a need for a common european chapter if we deal with eu institutions, but that would prolly be more a lobby organisation
Finne/henna
--- Erik Moeller eloquence@gmail.com wrote:
That was my first thought, too, but I don't think this direction is necessarily right. First of all, you end up with another legal body with another to-be-(s)elected group of representatives: more bureaucracy. More importantly, cooperations between chapters are likely going to be an "ad hoc" thing:
- "Let's have an Eastern Europe meeting."
- "Let's cooperate between DE and AT for a media campaign."
- "Let's start a metadata project for digitized documents in Croatian
and Serbian."
- "Let's approach a Commonwealth organization for a grant."
Good point for things like a Wikimedia Balkans (where no nation or nation-like body exists that covers that area), but I don't agree for things like a Wikimedia Europa, where a such a body does exist (a confederation of nations that is growing closer together and has many laws and representatives of its own). But in reality, this is up to a combination of popular support in various areas and what the board will allow as an *official* chapter.
-- mav
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