[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Pennsylvania

[Casey Brown]

Just for the record, we are doing State-based chapters at the request of the
Chapters Committee.  We had originally wanted a regional committee, but
ChapComm strongly suggested simply a state organization (and who were we to
argue? :P).

Interesting point about the name.  However, the two do indeed overlap, in
many instances including this one.  Our own article even says that the
internet TLD .pa is used by Panama *and* Pennsylvania jointly, due to the
overlap in their names.  I really don't think it is worth changing at this
moment in time.  After all, there may never be a Wikimedia Panama and it is
just an abbreviation, no official meaning is given.

Casey Brown
Cbrown1023

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Filip
Maljkovic
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 4:53 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Pennsylvania

Andrew Whitworth wrote:
> I'm cross-posting this message to both the foundation-l and the 
> now-defunct wikimediaus-l lists. Many people here may already be aware 
> of the new Wikimedia Pennsylvania chapter that is in active 
> development, either from the various pages that have sprung up on meta 
> from it, from our blog on the planet, or from word of mouth.
>
> For those who are not aware, We are working to create a local chapter 
> for the Pennsylvania area. It will be the first state chapter, and 
> possibly the first north american chapter (unless the canadian chapter 
> can get rolling before we do). Our chapter is going to be focused 
> primarily on a grass-roots community outreach effort, in an attempt to 
> drum up both new contributors and new content consumers. Some of the 
> people we would like to target initially are public school systems 
> (including the financially-distressed Philadelphia area school 
> district, which could benefit significantly from a free textbook 
> alternative), universities, and community organizations. We would also 
> like to do some fundraising, but the extent to which we have organized 
> fundraisers is yet to be determined.
>
> We are instituting an open membership policy: No membership fees, and 
> no residential requirements on membership. Due to the 
> community-oriented mission of the chapter people from distant areas 
> may have a difficulty participating, but we do not intend to 
> disenfranchise anybody because of their geographical location. We are 
> hoping that this policy will help to get many people involved, will 
> help other state chapters get started, and will serve as an 
> organizational model for future state chapters.
>
> We have created a new mailinglist for the chapter at wikimediapa-l. We 
> have an irc chatroom on freenode (#Wikimedia-pa), and a homepage on 
> meta: [[meta:Wikimedia Philadelphia]]. People who are interested in 
> more information can turn to any of these sources. We will be 
> submitting the first draft of our bylaws to the chapters committee 
> soon (hopefully in a week or two) and are already looking at the 
> paperwork to become 503(c) (although that step will be saved for the 
> future when we see how well the chapter is working out).
>
> --Andrew Whitworth
Well, this is certainly good news. Great thing going, guys. One remark, 
though: I'm not quite sure (future) US chapters should have 
abbreviations that way. When I saw wikimediapa-l, I thought of Wikimedia 
Pakistan (although, PA stands for Panama, the point is the same). 
Because of the two-letter-codes overlapping with the US TLCs, it might 
be wise to introduce something like wikimediaus-pa-l (likewise for the 
IRC channel) or anything else that would make it clear that the TLC 
isn't of a country, but of a US state.

Thanks,
Filip



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