There have been a few disjoint discussions about US chapter formation
recently. Austin mentioned this in a foundation-l thread last month;
Alex756 yesterday mentioned the idea of a regional chapter, and I note he
had started a page about "wikimedia new york", reminding me that there is a
[dormant] mailing list for such discussions. Those who are interested,
please sign up for the mailing list, and use Meta, so the discussions do not
get too fragmented.
Outstanding issues : Does it make sense to have regional chapters? How
could a national chapter work in a large country with distributed clusters
of users? What are the legal issues involved? (Alex can help here). What
are possible projects to take on?
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaus-lhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_United_States_of_Americahttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_New_York
Cheers,
SJ
[cc:ing others who have recently brought up related ideas but aren't yet on
that list.]
One of the problems we have is that the US is much larger than most
other countries with national chapters, and we are probably going to
need to consider establishing regional subchapters. I do not believe
that having 50 state subchapters is worth doing, at least not until we
get really big. Initially we probably should have somewhere between 3
and 15 chapters, depending on interest levels, and be prepared to
split chapters as need be. It would be highly useful for us to get
demographics on where our "interested editors" are so as to better
plan the structure of a US chapter.
Even if we don't initially create subchapters (and we might not) we
should write into our bylaws the ability to create, split, merge, and
dissolve them, because it will come up.
Kelly
Hopefully everyone interested is subscribed by now; I'm not personally
keeping a list of names.
Averse as I am to organizing "big stuff" in real-life meetings, where
valuable input is lost just because certain people aren't able to free
up their schedule and travel, I'd like to have a (brief) session—or
series of sessions—to discuss the formation of an American chapter (or
multiple chapters). As everyone knows, much more can be accomplished
with even brief in-person interaction, despite the drawbacks.
It would be nice to gear up the discussion on this list, then report
as things develop so people are kept in the loop as much as possible.
So, with less than a month left, let's start talking.
Everyone should begin by reviewing the pages linked from
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters>; they're not quite as
informative as I'd like, but they cover the basics accurately.
Second, everyone attending Wikimania and interested in participating
in such a discussion should e-mail me with your names, so I can check
you against the attendee list and help make this happen.
My uncharacteristically long signature should clue anyone in to who I
am and why I'd be doing such a thing.
--
Austin Hair <ahair(a)wikimedia.org>
Vice Chairman, Chapters Committee
Wikimania 2006 Registration and Technical Manager
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.