[Foundation-l] Board-announcement: Board Restructuring

Mon Apr 28 07:44:06 UTC 2008

Hoi,
Becoming a member of a chapter is a choice. As a chapter is not related to
projects, contributors to the Russian, Javanese, West Frisian, English and
Dutch projects are equally welcome to the Dutch chapter. A chapter is
organised in order to provide representation of our movement in a particular
jurisdiction. I call it movement here because it is NOT representing neither
the WMF nor its projects.

There is nothing wrong in having contributors to projects all over the
world. It is important for chapters to realise that they need to be
welcoming to the people that are not part of what is often considered the
primary project in a country. When you consider Russia, many of its
languages are included in the long list that we support with Wikipedias and
other projects.
Thanks,
      GerardM

2008/4/28 Yaroslav M. Blanter <putevod at mccme.ru>:

> I have already asked this question on meta (and got a response from Ziko,
> which I am however not to happy with).
>
> A real life example.
>
> I am a Russian citizen, mostly contributing to ru.wp, and I am an admin on
> ru.wp
>
> I reside in the Netherlands and I have smth like 10 edits on nl.wp
> (probably  there will be more coming, but at the time I have no interest
> in nl.wp meta-issues).
>
> I have whatsoever no connection with the (potentially upcoming) ru
> chapter, and I would be definitely not able to attend the meetings etc.
>
> What chapter does represent me, even in the long run?
>
> Note that three out of 5 bureaucrats of ru.wp reside abroad (2 in Germany,
> 1 in Belgium), and two of them have never been (and probably will never
> become) Russian citizens or residents.
>
> Cheers
> Yaroslav
>
> >>  You are absolutely correct Mark.
> >>  But you may not have understood that chapters will not necessarily
> >> elect
> >>  chapter members ?
> >>  I even have the weakness to think that they will have the wisdom to
> >>  avoid that trap ;-)
> >
> > Hopefully so, and Kurt seems to show such a wisdom already (and you
> > are also WMFR Board member, right?), so in a short time it would be
> > okay (or am I too optimistic?), but for a long run, I'm not sure the
> > scheme announced is the best composition and schedule.
> >
> > Several brainstormig ideas:
> > * Why not having the "chapter seats" as of appointed ones and keep the
> > community vote seats in the current number or so?
> > * Why distribute into 3/2/1/4? Why not 4/2/ ...  and have the
> > community to elect 2 in one year?
> > * Why (always) need 4 appointed? (I think it was already brought
> > up...) why not say "up to 4"?
> > etc etc.
> >
> > The chapter seats may have many implications. It may be seen as an
> > alternative of current  community seats, so from this view, it could
> > be seen as reduced the power of community, specially when one have no
> > near future possibility to settle a chapter in his land (e.g. PRC Main
> > Land, excluding HK and Macau). Reflecting more thought from the
> > chapters, in respect to their experience, is fine. But reducing the
> > representation of the rest of community is not always fine.
> >
> > However, I have another thought it wouldn't make the situation change
> > drastically at least at this moment: my gray cell units whispers
> > "anyway most of votes come from the project whose volunteers or at
> > least some of them have formed a chapter or more?" And I am tempting
> > to say "yeah, exactly" .... For 2007: top ten projects of voters were
> > en [UK and now Austria], de [DE, CH and now AU], fr [FR, CH], it [IT,
> > CH], pl, nl [NL], ja, commons, no [now NO], es [now AR and we know
> > already some planning chapters] . Only ja has no chapter even in the
> > plan, and we may remove commons for this consideration because of
> > their service project characteristic.. In top twenty, we will find
> > also he and zh. sv and sr had relatively small numbers of voters (10
> > and 8 respectively) but anyway there are many projects which had no
> > voter at all).
> >
> > I won't say the issue of overweight is purely theoretical, since I
> > believe the composition of Board should be considered carefully, both
> > in a short term and in a long run. But even such consideration is
> > genuine theoretical, it should be based on facts we know and have
> > faced. I think I don't so much like of this chapter seat and its
> > distribution ideas, but currently I won't reject it simply either.
> >
> > Re: community election schedule. As a past election committee member I
> > tend to support a election in every two years, because of overhead of
> > election process, but on the other hand, I believe the basic idea of
> > having an election every year is good to keep the BoT composition to
> > reflect the  latest community concerns, specially considering the
> > possibility the chapter seats will be able to be taken by people not
> > coming from the community.
> >
> > And my first question was: is there any potential problem to have
> > other orgs (legally chapters are other orgs based in another country,
> > at least at that moment, right?) voices to select WMF BoT and not vice
> > versa? I suppose the Board had consulted Mike and he nodded, but I
> > would love to get further explanation.
> >
> > --
> > KIZU Naoko
> > http://d.hatena.ne.jp/Britty (in Japanese)
> > Quote of the Day (English): http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/WQ:QOTD
> >
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>
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