[Foundation-l] Serbia and Montenegro

[Delphine Ménard]

On 5/24/06, arnomane at gmx.de <arnomane at gmx.de> wrote:

> Why not creating a Wikimedia chapter that is a community asociation of
> croatian, serbian, serbo-croatian ... Wikipedias and which is thus trying to
> care about all of them?

Because, as stated in the Chapters FAQ, chapters have a country base,
on the contrary to projects. At some point, you need a legal form of
some kind, and as far as I know, there is no such thing as a legal
form that would allow the creation of a Germano-Swiss-Austrian
chapter, just because they all speak German, or a
Franco-Canadian-Blegian-Swiss chapter. It'd have to be legally based
somewhere.

I think the debate is drifting from a purely legal thing, ie. the
country is now called "Serbia" and not "Serbia and Montenegro" to a
trial of intention (that's a French word - procès d'intention) to the
Serbians for having to change their name.

It's not their fault, it doesn't mean that Montenegrans are not
welcome in the Serbian chapter, or Croats for that matter, until they
also have a legal frame to which they can attach. It does not mean
either that once all formed, those chapters will not work on common
projects such as "The Balkan Wikimedia project" or some such.

It's life. Wikimedia "Deutschland" is called Wikimedia "Deutschland"
and it operates in "Deutschland". The name does not prevent it from
working together with a future Austrian chapter or with the new born
Swiss chapter. On the contrary. Working towards a similar goal creates
bridges and ties across countries, languages and cultures that may be
very or slightly different and that learn from each other, from their
mistakes and their successes.

Imposing names or cooperation on chapters that form in different parts
of the world just because we think it's *nicer* is, in my opinion, not
the way to go.

Delphine
-- 
~notafish