[Foundation-l] Accelerating chapter creation

[Delphine Ménard]

On 9/26/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> True. What I think is essential in this process is showcasing what
> chapters _already_ do.

Yes, this, though, lies in the hands of the chapters. It is a matter
of them getting organized and sharing, just like Philipp or Frank did,
with the rest of the community, what they do when they do it.
>
> I agree with what TOR said regarding additional preconditions for my
> proposal. I hope to have a telconf with Delphine soon to get a better
> picture of the chapter situation.
>
> I also agree with you that IRC (or real-life) meetings can be an
> excellent way to have honest discussions about the future direction of
> a wiki community. Effe, if you are interested in running/organizing
> such meetings, can you contact me privately and we'll try to work out
> the details.

The channel #wikimedia-chapters is open to anyone who feels like
dropping by and members of the chapters committee are there to answer
questions.

The experience of the chapters committee proves that there definitely
is a lack of communication about what the chapters committee does, and
how. Lukasz has addressed those points and given a few potential
answers. This should be reinforced and we might want to find a way to
make sure that all projects know "about" the chapters committee, but
this goes par with a better communication about what the Foundation
does, what it is, and how one can get involved.

On your idea of advertising chapters on site notices, I will state
that I am not sure it is the way to go at all.

Chapters must answer the need of a geographical community to get
together for reasons that make sense, as Tomasz stated, they should
never be the "cool thing to do of the day".

I remember Austin spending hours in the channel trying to make
understand to one user that creating a chapter was not a one-shot
thing, but rather the result of a concertation between people in a
country who wished to offer a local face to potential partners, to the
press if need be, to political instances etc. This kind of
communication should be emphasized, and we should not be giving the
wrong impression that chapters are either easy to set up, nor the
answer to everyone's questions.

All of us have helped people reflect in one country or another about
what it was to be a chapter. Many people have started reflecting and
gave up, for reasons that were in no way tied either to the Chapters
committee or the Foundation. In the end, I believe that we go back to
the same old thing, better advertising of what a chapter is, what they
do, how they do it, what their relationship to the Foundation AND the
projects is, is the first thing to tackle. Having to deal with 100
chapters-to-be that do not know the first thing about this is in my
opinion a waste of everybody's time.


Delphine
-- 
~notafish