[Foundation-l] Board-announcement: Board Restructuring

[Lars Aronsson]

Geoffrey Plourde wrote:

> Thats lovely for anyone not in the US. Unfortunately, any US 
> chapters are on hold until ChapCom defines the terms.

There's a bit of politics here.  Some are suggesting there should 
be a "European chapter" and I'm personally strongly opposed to 
that idea.  In my mind, it's like asking Sweden to resign its seat 
in the United Nations in favor of a single seat for the European 
Union.  I'd much rather allow Pennsylvania and California a seat 
each in the U.N. than resigning the Swedish one.

I think that Pennsylvania, New York and California can do a lot.  
You can organize membership organizations of local wiki[pm]edians, 
you can raise money and submit grant applications, you can lobby 
and influence local library and school groups, you can speak to 
media.  The only thing you can't do (and this is frustrating 
enough) is to use the name or trademarks of the Wikimedia 
Foundation.

If the WMF board later accepts statewide chapters (as I would 
hope), you can apply for that status.  If it insists on a U.S. 
chapter and one is formed, your statewide organization can become 
a subchapter of that.  Either way, your work won't be wasted.
Great walls are made from bricks, so start making bricks.

In October 2007, we formed the membership association "WMF 
Sverige" with bylaws, membership, board, registration with the 
authorities, and a bank account, with the purpose of supporting 
free knowledge and the projects run by the Wikimedia Foundation.  
We were a supporter club and "WMF" is not a protected name.  In 
December we were accepted as a chapter, and subsequently changed 
our name to Wikimedia Sverige.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se