[Foundation-l] Join the chapters committee?

[Joe Huber]

On Nov 11, 2007 3:08 PM, Casey Brown <cbrown1023.ml at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/11/07, josef huber <josef.s.huber at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Dear Chapters Committee,
> >
> > I looked a little on the chapters commitee page (like
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_committee/News) and found that you
> > are already 5 people and 2 advisors. Adding another 3 people would make it
> > 8.
> 
> Altough it says on that page that they wanted to keep a smaller-sized
> group, obviously the feel they now need to increase the size.

You are right, this must be a little bit outdated. Looking at the chapter page histories like: http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_chapters&action=history reveals notice that chapters people themselves prepare the contents.


> >But I had difficulties to figure out what you really do.
> >
> > From the job description I can figure out the task would be "read boring
> > bylaw documents", and "learn about different legal systems" ... which is a
> > more educational thing than doing real work i guess.
> >
> 
> From my experiences working wth the chapters committee, it's not
> really educational work.  They review the prospective bylaws of a
> local chapter and approve the chapter before it goes to the Foundatuon
> for the final approval.  The ChapCom needs to read up on the
> countries' loca laws and legal systems to make surw the bylaws work
> and other items.

How did you work with the chapters committee, and is there a trace of that somewhere? Googling for "Wikimedia Foundation Chapter Bylaw" brings up http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_committee/Resolutions/Approval_of_Wikimedia_Nederland_-_September_2006 where you can judge that they need to read approximately 10 lines, the ones which concern the relationship with the foundation.

> > From the URLs you provided one could make out that "write boring and
> > unnecessary complicated rules and processes" would be also a task.

> What do you mean here?  In the legal world, everything ChapCom does is
> very necessary and not entirely complicated.  Any complications that
> you speak of are most likely necessar and not deliberate by the
> committee.

On the website there is a lot of complicated things for becoming and running a chapter.

> > Could you shed some light on what the Chapters Committee can bring to this
> > world please?
> >
> 
> ...'can' bring to this world?  The Committee already exists and does a
> pretty good job.  This e-mail was just about expanding the cmmittee's
> membership.

How do you judge if it does a pretty good job, and how could I judge?

The only really public action I am aware of was that the chapter committees chair was blamed to be wikimedia foundations most expensive employee. But I can unfortunately not remember any more if it was 100.000 US$ per year, including travel cost and 300 US$ child care per day for her boy friend, not including contributions from the various chapters?

If that amount is approximately correct one could ask if this is really worth the money - even more as one does not notice, from outside, that they are doing any work. A pity they do not even bother to explain it a little bit.

Joe.