Actually, I suggested Wikimedia United States as a kind of overarching group that might someday help coordinate the smaller groups and help prevent the fears of other countries that think we’d overwhelm them in voting once regions get votes. Anyways, Dominic actually suggested this unintentionally, and I was thinking of it as I read his e-mail, but Wikimedians in the United States would actually be a great name, because it is short, simple, and doesn’t have any of the baggage that “Committee” or any of those other names have.
 
Kevin
 
Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2013 2:10 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikimediaus-l] Naming of pan-US Wikimedia group
 
I think you are arguing against yourself with "Wikimedia US Community". I don't see how "Community" is distinct from "Wikimedians". It seems like wordiness for no real purpose—is there or should there be a type of Wikimedia US that is not about or of the "Community"? Are you implying official chapters aren't about the community? Is it worse to confuse a chapter-like entity for a chapter than to be completely confused as to what some strangely named entity exists for?
 
I think that if this is the definitive group that would represent the Wikimedians in United States in some capacity, the specific governance structure makes little difference when it comes to nomenclature, and it shouldn't be denied the simple, traditional geographic naming convention just because it's one type of affiliation and not another. Certainly, we shouldn't act like it's off the table when it makes the most since in many ways.
 
Dominic

On 14 August 2013 01:44, Pharos <pharosofalexandria@gmail.com> wrote:
The problem with "Wikimedia United States" is, besides AffCom, that it implies we are a big national chapter to all of the international Wikimedians, who are used to this exact naming format for big national chapters.

I was thinking about it, and perhaps "Wikimedia US Community" might just achieve the right balance between modesty and brandedness.

WALRUSly yours,
Richard
(User:Pharos)


On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 1:33 AM, Dominic McDevitt-Parks <mcdevitd@gmail.com> wrote:
[Changing the subject line since the subject of the thread has shifted.]
 
I think all of these naming discussions over the years have been more annoying than useful. WALRUS has its charm, but is a bit silly and no one denies that. I don't think the "Federation" was any less absurd, however, and I'm not sure the "Coalition" is far behind. The newer names are professional, but seem to tend towards projecting a false sense of formal organizational structure/maturity to achieve that. I don't think we should be too quick to change all the names on things yet again before we've hashed these things out. To be honest, I even missed the change from Federation to Coalition earlier this year, and I'm usually attentive to these things.
 
My opinion is that we should just be clear and descriptive, if we are moving away from adorableness. I would favor "Wikimedia United States" (do we actually know AffCom would dislike that, even if we became a user group, which is trivially easy?), and, if not that, "Wikimedians in the United States" or "United States Wikimedians".
 
Dominic

On 14 August 2013 00:52, Kevin Rutherford <ktr101@hotmail.com> wrote:
I second Jason, as WALRUS has never really sounded professional in my opinion, and I know there was talk at Wikimania in 2012 about finding a name to replace it. Right now, competing names don't help us, and I doubt most active Wikimedians could describe the function of each group mentioned below.


Kevin Rutherford

Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 13, 2013, at 11:13 PM, "Jason Moore" <anotherbelieverwp@gmail.com> wrote:

I lean towards dropping the WALRUS name, and sticking with the more legitimate-sounding Coalition.
 
Jason / Another Believer


On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 8:09 PM, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm not sure we can really separate the branding that way, since our en.wiki activity mostly consists of advertising for off-wiki events.  If someone from en.wiki shows up at a "WALRUS" event and starts talking to someone from meta who believes it to be a "Wikimedia US" event, there's still going to be some degree of confusion (and resulting brand dilution).
 
Personally, I think we're at the point where we need to select a single brand and stick with it everywhere, rather than trying to maintain multiple competing brands.
 
Cheers,
Kirill


On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 6:39 PM, Pharos <pharosofalexandria@gmail.com> wrote:
I was thinking that we could differentiate the two by developing the 'WALRUS' branding more as a wikiproject-type campaign on enwiki, while reserving the "official unofficial" name of 'Wikimedia United States Coalition' for the more bureaucratic niceties of meta (widespread use of the latter name outside of meta without explicit WMF go-ahead might also be problematic).

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)


On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 10:13 PM, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin@gmail.com> wrote:
The template looks good, but shouldn't we be using the same "Wikimedia United States Coalition" terminology that we use in the meta version of the template, so as to be consistent?
 
Cheers,
Kirill


On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 10:10 AM, Pharos <pharosofalexandria@gmail.com> wrote:
Following up on Bob's idea of regional "sister cities" cooperation, I've grouped together some of the more active cities on the new enwiki template, by the Northeast, Midwest, South, and West:
Maybe it could be a good idea in future to have an on-wiki noticeboard for each of these four very rough chunks of the country, just to help with regional communication and scheduling of events (and especially as a way to reach out to some of the smaller / less active cities, and e.g. help the Texans settle on a meetup location).
 
Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)


On Sat, Jul 13, 2013 at 9:00 PM, Samuel Klein <meta.sj@gmail.com> wrote:
(yet!)

On Sat, Jul 13, 2013 at 3:42 PM, Bob the Wikipedian
<bobthewikipedian@gmail.com> wrote:
> But none of those cities have a WALRUS chapter. :P
>
> Bob
>
>
> On 7/13/2013 11:35 AM, Samuel Klein wrote:
>>
>> Boston is engaged in sibling rivalry and virtual event coordination
>> would be natural with the cities of
>> Boston and New Boston in  NH, NY (an enclave of Red Sox Nation), IN,
>> IL, OH, MI, KY, MO, AL, GA, and TX.
>> Cambridge in PA, ID, IA, KS, ME, MD, MN, NB, VT, and WI... and NY
>> again (enclaves 2 and 3)
>> Brighton in CO, OR, and TN (and enclaves 4-6 in NY)
>>
>> That covers about half of the country.
>>
>> SJ
>>
>> On Sat, Jul 13, 2013 at 11:13 AM, Bob the Wikipedian
>> <bobthewikipedian@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Actually, we're already doing this in Indiana. Evansville, Bloomington,
>>> and
>>> Indianapolis are sister cities since we're within several hours of one
>>> another. We've been taking turns hosting the annual Wiknic.
>>>
>>> Bob (Evansville)
>>>
>>>
>>> On 7/12/2013 9:40 AM, Pharos wrote:
>>>
>>> Perhaps it might be a good idea to connect different local Wikimedian
>>> efforts through an informal sister cities / regions program...
>>>
>>> Think of it:
>>>
>>> Cascadia and New England!
>>>
>>> Minnesota and Colorado!
>>>
>>> LA and Atlanta!
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Richard
>>> (User:Pharos)
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
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>>> Wikimediaus-l@lists.wikimedia.org
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>>>
>>>
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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