Hi Ilario, it is the will of the board to make it easy to start a recognised body to do work and it is totally acceptable if these bodies also die after having fulfilled their purpose - or grow and develop into other affiliation models. So the criterium for us is easy entry. Anyway the user groups have limited liability and responsibilities, access to ressources is controlled on a case by case basis eg. through the Grant Avisory Committee and every year user groups must be renewed, for this we want so see a simple report. So every ug with the minimum of activity - a report written, having responded to our follow-up e-mail - is renewed. /Manuel -- sent from mobile phoneAm 18.10.2015 4:46 nachm. schrieb Ilario Valdelli &lt;valdelli(a)gmail.com&gt;om>: > > I personally think that the main concern, in this proliferation of > groups, is an lack of the implementation of a "good governance". > > A user group is like a body, it can born, can develop and can die. > > At the moment there is an unclear guideline about the monitoring and the > development of these groups: they can only born. > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_user_groups > > Basically the affiliation committee creates these entities, but don't > monitor them and don't evaluate to retire (or the best would be to > freeze) some old entities when they become essentially inactive or silent. > > In this case the balance would be compensated and the proliferation of > these groups would have a sense. > > Kind regards > > On 18.10.2015 16:48, Gregory Varnum wrote: > > The Affiliations Committee (AffCom) has been preparing for the increased momentum since the user group model was implemented, and it follows a pattern that we’ve been seeing over the past couple of years. In 2013, we approved 10 user groups, last year we approved 19, and so far this year we have approved around 20. That number will likely increase next year. This growing momentum is why we have continued to tweak the approval process to be faster and able to handle the growing momentum. So, from our perspective, this is something we have been preparing for from the start, and not a surprise. > > > > Personally, I think further complicating affiliate classifications is a bad idea. “Small” and “larger” are very culturally relative, varies across the models (there are user groups “larger” than chapters), changes over time, and implies that “large” affiliates do work “small” affiliates cannot, when we continue to see that is in fact not the case at all. The current criteria for WMCON is active and inactive, which seems far more appropriate. Additionally, dividing them will not save much money, if any, as there would still presumably be a gathering for the “small” affiliates. > > > > I agree with Leigh and others that affiliates should receive more support, but I do not think those efforts will be served well by further dividing them. > > > > -greg (User:Varnent) > > Vice Chair, Wikimedia Affiliations Committee > > > > > > -- > Ilario Valdelli > Wikimedia CH > Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens > Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre > Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera > Switzerland - 8008 Zürich > Tel: +41764821371 > http://www.wikimedia.ch > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>