Samuel Klein wrote:

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-l http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_United_States_of_America http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_United_States_of_America http://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.]

I think there are some things that could be done with regional "chapters", even if done for strictly social reasons. I'm glad to see that this mailing list is actually being used for a change.

One of the problems with the USA is that it is more organized like the EU in terms of national politics. In other words, the U.S. Federal government is best compared to that of the EU, and not Germany, France, or Poland. There is no move that I see for a single EU Wikimedia organization at the moment, and state-level chapters might be a better way to deal with organizations within the USA, or at least regional chapters like Wikimedia New England or Wikimedia Dixie.

In addition to all of that, there doesn't seem to be a major push for organization as the tax benefits aren't there, nor is there going to be a huge drive to have a seperate independent budget from the main Wikimedia Foundation for just American Wikimedia users.

At least if there were a seperate budget, what would the money be spent on that wouldn't go straight to the WMF? A WM-USA organization would also have to go through the whole nasty process of filing as a non-profit organization, go through the IRS hoops, and get some lawyers (hopefully pro bono) to assist with this whole process. This seems like a waste of effort for what is right now simply duplicating the WMF. Activities that would go beyond paying for servers would have to be a part of WM-USA in order for it to be successful.

One reason for a national charter is that it would be legally much easier to "charter" local organizations such as Wikimedia New York. They would not have to go through the legal process of full incorporation, and instead only have to be "chartered" through the national organization. The real question then is how much independence from the main Wikimedia Foundation does the WM-USA wish to have, particularly from participants in such an organization?