Birgitte writes:
The US sub-national issue is not about power but logistics. One national chapter will never self-organize in the US. All the incentives to do so (tax-deductabilty, legal support, press contacts) have been "stolen" by the WMF.
So far as I know, there is no legal prohibition or hurdle that prevents either a national chapter or a subnational chapter from forming in the United States. Such a chapter certainly could organize itself as a nonprofit, seek tax-deductible status, and so on.
I do wish you hadn't used the word "stolen," even if you mean for it to be a metaphor.
I agree that there are geographic hurdles with regard to a U.S. national chapter, but would stop short of predicting that a national chapter will "never self-organize." Over the course of my career, I've frequently been surprised at the willingness of large geographic groups to self-organize.
--Mike
Well, some people are talking about US chapterS, but shouldn't there be only one chapter per country? Otherwise, other chapters could get the idea to split up and have e.g. 16 chapters in Germany. Especially when chapters will have the right to vote for Board members, one will have to be strict about that. Ziko
2008/5/1 Mike Godwin mgodwin@wikimedia.org:
Birgitte writes:
The US sub-national issue is not about power but logistics. One national chapter will never self-organize in the US. All the incentives to do so (tax-deductabilty, legal support, press contacts) have been "stolen" by the WMF.
So far as I know, there is no legal prohibition or hurdle that prevents either a national chapter or a subnational chapter from forming in the United States. Such a chapter certainly could organize itself as a nonprofit, seek tax-deductible status, and so on.
I do wish you hadn't used the word "stolen," even if you mean for it to be a metaphor.
I agree that there are geographic hurdles with regard to a U.S. national chapter, but would stop short of predicting that a national chapter will "never self-organize." Over the course of my career, I've frequently been surprised at the willingness of large geographic groups to self-organize.
--Mike
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The problem is based on size. Germany has an area of around 138,000 square miles, and has around 82 million people. California alone has 163,000 or so square miles of area, bigger than Germany, but only around 32 million people, meaning it has a much larger area for far fewer people.
And that's just one state out of 50. There are significant cultural differences between Louisiana and New Jersey, for instance. A US national chapter is not necessarily able to adequately represent that. Not to mention, the individual states in the US are so large and autonomous they act almost at the same level as other countries throughout the world.
-Dan On May 1, 2008, at 1:45 PM, Ziko van Dijk wrote:
Well, some people are talking about US chapterS, but shouldn't there be only one chapter per country? Otherwise, other chapters could get the idea to split up and have e.g. 16 chapters in Germany. Especially when chapters will have the right to vote for Board members, one will have to be strict about that. Ziko
2008/5/1 Mike Godwin mgodwin@wikimedia.org:
Birgitte writes:
The US sub-national issue is not about power but logistics. One national chapter will never self-organize in the US. All the incentives to do so (tax-deductabilty, legal support, press contacts) have been "stolen" by the WMF.
So far as I know, there is no legal prohibition or hurdle that prevents either a national chapter or a subnational chapter from forming in the United States. Such a chapter certainly could organize itself as a nonprofit, seek tax-deductible status, and so on.
I do wish you hadn't used the word "stolen," even if you mean for it to be a metaphor.
I agree that there are geographic hurdles with regard to a U.S. national chapter, but would stop short of predicting that a national chapter will "never self-organize." Over the course of my career, I've frequently been surprised at the willingness of large geographic groups to self-organize.
--Mike
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-- Ziko van Dijk NL-Silvolde
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On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 1:52 PM, Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com wrote:
The problem is based on size. Germany has an area of around 138,000 square miles, and has around 82 million people. California alone has 163,000 or so square miles of area, bigger than Germany, but only around 32 million people, meaning it has a much larger area for far fewer people.
And that's just one state out of 50. There are significant cultural differences between Louisiana and New Jersey, for instance. A US national chapter is not necessarily able to adequately represent that. Not to mention, the individual states in the US are so large and autonomous they act almost at the same level as other countries throughout the world.
-Dan
And certainly, logistically, there's a serious problem. A flight from New York to Los Angeles, for example, would cost anywhere from $300-500 round-trip. And driving would be out of the question for most; that's a 2,700 mile, 40-hour drive.
2008/5/1 Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com:
The problem is based on size. Germany has an area of around 138,000 square miles, and has around 82 million people. California alone has 163,000 or so square miles of area, bigger than Germany, but only around 32 million people, meaning it has a much larger area for far fewer people.
And that's just one state out of 50. There are significant cultural differences between Louisiana and New Jersey, for instance. A US national chapter is not necessarily able to adequately represent that. Not to mention, the individual states in the US are so large and autonomous they act almost at the same level as other countries throughout the world.
Well - the differences between say Bawaria and Branderburg are quite high as well. Traveling by a plane from LA to NY and traveling by train from Frankfurt on Oder to Munich takes similar amount of time. I guess it is even easier to travel from LA to NY than from Franfurt on Oder to Munich :-)
Tomasz Ganicz wrote:
2008/5/1 Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com:
The problem is based on size. Germany has an area of around 138,000 square miles, and has around 82 million people. California alone has 163,000 or so square miles of area, bigger than Germany, but only around 32 million people, meaning it has a much larger area for far fewer people.
And that's just one state out of 50. There are significant cultural differences between Louisiana and New Jersey, for instance. A US national chapter is not necessarily able to adequately represent that. Not to mention, the individual states in the US are so large and autonomous they act almost at the same level as other countries throughout the world.
Well - the differences between say Bawaria and Branderburg are quite high as well. Traveling by a plane from LA to NY and traveling by train from Frankfurt on Oder to Munich takes similar amount of time. I guess it is even easier to travel from LA to NY than from Franfurt on Oder to Munich :-)
Are you taking into account additional time for security, and other check-in matters. Going the other way from NY to anywhere in the US could involve two hours sitting on the plane while it waits for clearance to take off.
Ec
On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 2:52 AM, Dan Rosenthal swatjester@gmail.com wrote:
The problem is based on size. Germany has an area of around 138,000 square miles, and has around 82 million people. California alone has 163,000 or so square miles of area, bigger than Germany, but only around 32 million people, meaning it has a much larger area for far fewer people.
For gathering people locally it sounds a good reason, particularily regarding to incentive to form up Birgitte brought up, but still there are many nationwide organizations in the United States of America?
And that's just one state out of 50. There are significant cultural differences between Louisiana and New Jersey, for instance. A US national chapter is not necessarily able to adequately represent that.
Not persuasive. Specially regarding to representation for selecting chapter-seats It may go only for US residents - for the rest of the world, sorry, it isn't too significant to distinguish from each other.
2008/5/1, Ziko van Dijk zvandijk@googlemail.com:
Well, some people are talking about US chapterS, but shouldn't there be only one chapter per country? Otherwise, other chapters could get the idea to split up and have e.g. 16 chapters in Germany. Especially when chapters will have the right to vote for Board members, one will have to be strict about that. Ziko
My personal go on this is: Discourage too much splitting up, but further assume good faith and let the chapters work out the most practical solution. At the end, that is what it is all about.
Lodewijk
On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 7:52 PM, effe iets anders effeietsanders@gmail.com wrote:
2008/5/1, Ziko van Dijk zvandijk@googlemail.com:
Well, some people are talking about US chapterS, but shouldn't there be only one chapter per country? Otherwise, other chapters could get the idea to split up and have e.g. 16 chapters in Germany. Especially when chapters will have the right to vote for Board members, one will have to be strict about that. Ziko
My personal go on this is: Discourage too much splitting up, but further assume good faith and let the chapters work out the most practical solution. At the end, that is what it is all about.
There are significant problems related mostly to area of covering. WM Serbia was organized quickly because maybe more than 80% of people interested in chapter are living in Belgrade metropolitan area (2M of inhabitants; Serbia has something more than 7M of inhabitants), which is well connected by public transport. Outside of Belgrade we had a lot of problems to organize anything sensible. Even in the two next cities by size (200-300K) we had a lot of problems to make any kind of sustainable organization.
Slovenians, for example, have a problem because the most important Wikimedians are all over Slovenia and they are not able to have regular meetings. Because of that, they realized that they should organize themselves formally through Slovenian LUG.
Canadian Wikimedians have the similar problem. There are ~35M of Canadians at the territory of the second largest country in the world. I may imagine that out of big cities they may have a lot of problems in organizing chapters at the province level.
I heard that even Polish Wikimedians have problem in making regular meetings. They also have a lot of significant contributors all over Poland. And, unlike Germany, Poland doesn't have a good amount of good highways and railways.
So, I really think that it is not rationally to think about one US chapter. The similar applies for other big countries. However, it *may* be reasonable to organize national level chapters in, for example, Russia, China and Brazil. People are concentrated around big cities and there is not yet a well enough Internet infrastructure all over those countries. However, those chapters should make a plan how to initiate subchapters; i.e., to federalize their own chapter. The same process, but from a particular chapters to the federation at the national level may be applied to US chapters. (Yes, it is good to have one common body inside of one country.)
At the other side, I really don't think that WMF should work as "Wikimedia USA", too. Its role is to be the common body to all of the chapters and Wikimedians and it should leave national level organization to some other people.
2008/5/1 Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com:
I heard that even Polish Wikimedians have problem in making regular meetings. They also have a lot of significant contributors all over Poland. And, unlike Germany, Poland doesn't have a good amount of good highways and railways.
Hmm. WMUK was set up to cover all of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as the maximum area under a single tax regime.
- d.
effe iets anders wrote:
2008/5/1, Ziko van Dijk zvandijk@googlemail.com:
Well, some people are talking about US chapterS, but shouldn't there be only one chapter per country? Otherwise, other chapters could get the idea to split up and have e.g. 16 chapters in Germany. Especially when chapters will have the right to vote for Board members, one will have to be strict about that. Ziko
My personal go on this is: Discourage too much splitting up, but further assume good faith and let the chapters work out the most practical solution. At the end, that is what it is all about.
I fully agree with Lodewijk. Incidentally, if the system incorporates some kind of proportionality - though I don't know what I would recommend - that would go some distance toward discouraging splitting up a chapter just to get more votes.
--Michael Snow
--- On Thu, 5/1/08, Mike Godwin mgodwin@wikimedia.org wrote:
From: Mike Godwin mgodwin@wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Chapter-selected Board seats - brainstorming To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Date: Thursday, May 1, 2008, 12:35 PM Birgitte writes:
The US sub-national issue is not about power but
logistics. One
national chapter will never self-organize in the US.
All the
incentives to do so (tax-deductabilty, legal support,
press
contacts) have been "stolen" by the WMF.
So far as I know, there is no legal prohibition or hurdle that prevents either a national chapter or a subnational chapter from forming in the United States. Such a chapter certainly could organize itself as a nonprofit, seek tax-deductible status, and so on.
I do wish you hadn't used the word "stolen," even if you mean for it to be a metaphor.
What I really mean is preempted but I try to tone down my level of English for the international crowd. In any event I mean it indifferently without a value judgment on the situation. The quotes were meant to undermine the negative context.
I agree that there are geographic hurdles with regard to a U.S. national chapter, but would stop short of predicting that a national chapter will "never self-organize." Over the course of my career, I've frequently been surprised at the willingness of large geographic groups to self-organize.
It is more than the high-cost of the geographic hurdles; there is also the lowered benefit because of the existence WMF Incorporated in the US. And while I will give you that anything is possible, you must agree that it would be foolish to stake the credibility of the whole "chapter's are the membership arm of WMF" platform on such tiny possibility.
Birgitte SB
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On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 2:02 PM, Birgitte SB birgitte_sb@yahoo.com wrote:
It is more than the high-cost of the geographic hurdles; there is also the lowered benefit because of the existence WMF Incorporated in the US.
The WMF is incorporated in Florida. The US doesn't handle incorporations.
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