[Foundation-l] Serbia and Montenegro

[Austin Hair]

On 5/25/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> … but in any
> event all of the people commenting, including me, I think we all agree
> that it should be left up to those local communities to figure out what
> makes the most sense for them.

I believe this is documented (somewhere) as Wikimedia policy, but even
if not, it's the undisputed consensus of those involved with such
decisions.  It's certainly not for us to object if the Serbs get
together with the Croat community and decide to form a broader
organization, or if individual Bosnians simply want to join the
Serbian chapter (which they can, even now).

> In other cases, we will have chapters which cover only parts of some
> nations.  For example, a 'U.S. local chapter' makes no sense because the
> US is much much too big and diverse for that to be sensible.  I can
> easily imagine an "eastern seaboard" chapter, a "california" chapter,
> etc.  How to draw those lines, and why, well.... too early to speculate
> since no one has really tried to form one yet. :)

I could personally see, at least initially, something along the lines
of the Writers Guild of America—but as you say, so far it's only been
discussed in passing.  I've long had this plan to get interested
parties together at Wikimania for some preliminary talk, but I've been
preoccupied with other chapters and organizing the conference itself,
to say nothing of my day job, so it's remained something of a secret
plan.

Now that I've mentioned it, I suppose I actually have to do something about it.

Austin