To be honest, at some level, yes If I lived in Vancouver and most of
WM-Canada's work and board meetings wtc were centered in Toronto I would
have zero interest in joining and would generally object to them claiming
to represent me as an editor within their borders. I would also object to
them having exclusive rights to use the name in those borders. The same is
not necessarily true for say me living in Edinburgh and going
to occasionally going to WMUK meetings in London given that it's 1/4 the
distance. I'd probably still object to them representing me as an editor
especially if I wasn't a member but that's a completely different issue
since I don't think chapters should ever be about 'representation' .
I'm a strong advocate for the benefit of subnational chapters especially in
larger countries, I think places like WMNYC and WMDC are better overall for
the movement and those around them. I think that's especially true in the
US where we've already started having sub national chapters. I'd be fine
with a CA chapter (or an OR one and possibly if enough from both OR and WA
wanted to merge or something like that but I don't think it's that
necessary ). I'd be even more fine with a norcal/SF based or socal/LA based
chapter if there was a need. That's another important point, we create
incorporated orgs like crazy for some reason when they are frequently going
to be just fine as a user group especially now that we have user groups
being created as examples in the Mediawiki user groups. We now have a
process to use the marks and the names etc without incorporating,
incorporating costs not insignificant money time and resources every year
before it does any good and should not be done until it's necessary.
I know that this is billed as a 'larger chapter that can break down into
smaller chapters if people want' but I don't think that's very fair. I
think it inhibits the growth of smaller chapters (which I think are better)
and it will end up requiring the larger chapter to approve the fork/new
chapter which should in no way be the case.
James
On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 3:32 PM, ENWP Pine <deyntestiss(a)hotmail.com> wrote:
Hmmm.
Steven, we have Wikimedia Canada, which is larger than Cascadia and
includes multiple provinces. If the Chapters Committee approved Wikimedia
Canada then I'm not sure how they could cite geography as a reason against
a Wikimedia Cascadia with the exception of overlap into another nation's
territory.
James, would you also have opposed Wikimedia Canada on the same grounds
that you cite here?
Thanks,
Pine
------------------------------
From: jamesofur(a)gmail.com
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2012 14:59:41 -0800
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-SF] WM Cascadia chapter discussion tonight
To: wikimedia-sf(a)lists.wikimedia.org
CC: deyntestiss(a)hotmail.com
Also not totally sure If I'll be able to make it or not but have generally
made my belief known that broad spanding chapters like this are not a good
idea overall. In addition to the concerns from Steven below I just think
that the requirements and desires of groups in Alaska, Oregon, California
etc are too different. Yes I know that there are large countries with
single chapters but even there the work is really generally segregated to
one area of the country and not the whole place. I would be strongly
against a chapter this big but a user group of people interested is
<shrugs> fine.
James
On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 2:53 PM, Steven Walling <steven.walling(a)gmail.com>wrote;wrote:
On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 2:35 PM, ENWP Pine <deyntestiss(a)hotmail.com>wrote;wrote:
Tonight in #wikimedia-us at 6 PM Pacific will be the next Wikimedia US
meeting. Included on the agenda is discussion of the proposed Wikimedia
Cascadia chapter.
Possible geography for the Chapter includes California, Oregon,
Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska until such time as some of these
areas have more localized chapters. Also under discussion is asking
WM-Canada to share British Columbia with WM-Cascadia.
Please join the discussion in #wikimedia-us,
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Cascadia, and/or
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Cascadia.
Anyone who is interested in discussing a potential chapter that would
include the Bay area, please join the discussion!
Pine
I may not be able to make it, but wanted to express interest and bring up
one point of discussion...
In the past, I have informally asked Chapter Committee members about the
possibility of a chapter like this. I was told with no equivocation that
chapters which officially spanned multiple municipalities were forbidden,
and that we could have a Wikimedia Oregon, Washington, or California only
because we would have to pick a state in which to become officially
incorporated in and be responsible for.
My suggestion would be to avoid seeking official chapter status, and
instead form a group like Wikimedia Cascadia as a user group or thematic
organization.
Steven
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James Alexander
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