From my understanding, the founding of a local chapter shall be based more
on the need of local members than relying solely on lingual or political status of a place. Local chapters enable the local members with a legal status in getting sponsors, communication with organization.
On 10/25/06, Kevin T ktsquare@gmail.com wrote:
From my understanding, the founding of a local chapter shall be based more
on the need of local members than relying solely on lingual or political status of a place. Local chapters enable the local members with a legal status in getting sponsors, communication with organization.
<chair of the chapters committee speaking> I think that is a fair and sound summary fo what I was trying to say. There will be some core rules for the creation of chapters, the fact that they're not just "a bunch of people who get together on every Sunday" but rather an "organisation that has a legal status and with which the Wikimedia Foundation can have an agreement with" is definitely one of them. But Sam was also right in saying that this has to be evaluated on a case by case basis.
We are very far from having had to deal with all the possible configurations that are going to be presented to us. We have to start somewhere. And this is where we start. Chapters must have a legal basis.
So to answer Ilario's question, if a Hong Kong chapter makes sense today, it might not make sense anymore in 40 odd years. in which case, we will reevaluate.
</end official position>
<beginning personal opinion> On a more personal point of view, I believe that anchoring chapters with different rationales than that of projects (ie. jurisdiction based rather than language based) improves the cross communication between communities who should be striving towards he same goal, and not stop at their differences. Far from saying we should reunite X and Y, I believe that it makes sense that there is one Belgian chapter to start with, or one Canadian chapter to start with and that we then see the implications of having a French-speaking and an English speaking Canadian chapter or a Dutch-speaking Belgian Chapter and a French-speaking Belgian chapter", to take obvious and probably reductive examples.
Another core rules of chapters is that they should strive to achieve the same goals as the Wikimedia Foundation, goals which, in my opinion, transcend the borders of political or language differences. Any chapter should have at heart goals which, while naturally biased by the background they come from, strive to support the wikimedia projects in their entirety, whether French, Chinese, Bambara, Wikisource or Wiktionary.
If we're going to be a truly international organisation, I believe this is where we should start.
Delphine
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org