Kelly Martin wrote:
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
Honestly, I think one of the big problems facing the creation of "Wikimedia USA" is a percieved lack of benefits and lack of purpose for such an organization compared to similar organizations in other countries. The most compelling reason seems to be local fundrasing and local server hosting, both of which are dealt with fairly well by the main Wikimedia Foundation. While I can offer some reasons to want to organize on a more local level within the USA, the effort to create such a group seems to be much better spent on simply developing the Wikimedia projects themselves instead.
Mind you, this is not a criticism of those who want to establish Wikimedia-USA, but something that must be overcome and justified in an attempt to put together a U.S. chapter. Rather than trying to come up with the structure of how the organization would be put together, you must establish the need for such an organization in the first place. This is more than simply a "mission statement", but you must come up with a "killer app" (to use computer industry jargon) or the one thing that is so compelling to establish Wikimedia-USA that its purpose far outstrips any other reason to put the group together. So far I havn't seen that.
If all we are doing is organizing a group of people for the sake of being able to get together and throw parties and do live one-on-one chats, you don't have the compelling reason to get this put together. Yes, there are some "local" projects that can be improved considerably like updating local information pages on Wikipedia, but that isn't a "killer app". A local host for Wikimainia efforts is very borderline as rationale for putting together such a group, although this is certainly something that should be done if it is established.
Keep in mind that you must ask for almost all activities like this, what is something that Wikimedia USA can do, and can do very well, but the Wikimedia Foundation simply won't or can't do? If you can answer that question, the rest of this will fall into place, including state/regional organizations (or if those are even necessary). I will admit there are some activities that the WMF does that could be "delegated" to Wikimedia USA, but again that doesn't make a compelling reason to justifiy having it established in the first place.