[Foundation-l] A US Chapter Proposal

[Chad]

Community,

I was reading some of the discussion surrounding chapters, particularly
a chapter residing in the United States. As people have mentioned before
there are some issues to address in founding such a chapter, but I
believe I've come up with a proposal that helps deal with such issues. I
look forward to feedback.

The main issue with a US chapter is the size of the United States. While
in Europe, it is common for people to travel by rail and oftentimes see
other parts of the country, the US lacks such a well-designed public
transportation system. Driving from Florida to New York is quite a trip,
not even thinking about the trip across country. Trains in the US are
overpriced and slow; not to mention their slowly dying popularity as
a transportation mechanism. Flying is cost-prohibitive to the majority
of Americans. This presents us with a curious issue: How to coordinate
a nationwide chapter when meeting people from other parts of the
country is so difficult? The suggest has come up for state chapters, but
this presents two issues in and of themselves.

1) What do you do for areas like NYC? It would be much easier to
coordinate a chapter for its metropolitan area as opposed to "New
York State Chapter" or "New Jersey Chapter." For this, I would suggest
we have a fairly fluid system of allowing chapters to form. While a
"Virginia" chapter might not be workable, a DC Metropolitan Area one
would work (2 hours is not unreasonable for me to drive for a meeting,
at least). This brings us to our second issue:

2) Representation. If we allow per-state or per-region chapters, how much
of a say do each of them have in the Foundation? Is each state given a
voice? For this, I would say that the US gets *one* voice, much as the
German chapter is given *one* voice, or any of the others. While this
creates a logistical issue (how do many chapters present 1 voice?),
I believe it will create a system in which US Wikimedians can have
chapters to organize, without fear of over-representation in WMF issues.

The only final issue I've seen is that of funding. Who do you donate to?
Does an American donate to the WMF or to the local American Chapter?
In Germany, this isn't as much of an issue (as, if I understand this right,
non-profit money raised in Germany must be used *in* Germany, so
WM DE cannot send money to the US WMF. Someone correct me if
I'm terribly wrong here). As a proposal, I would say this: money donated
to the Foundation is clearly earmarked for them as such. It goes to servers,
salaries, etc., the same as it always has. WM US would need to simply
make it known and understood that money donated to them would be
for the sole purpose of facilitating WM US activities, and not to the
Foundation. This would help keep the issue of "where is my donation
going" from being so muddled.

If in fact we are going to have Chapter-based seats and they are
considered community seats, we need to insure that our community
remains enfranchised and the first step to that is facilitating chapters
in the countries that do not have them. Up until now, there has been
no definitive progress towards a US-based chapter, but I think I've come
up with a decent compromise we can work with. I look forward to other
ideas.

Always,
Chad