[Foundation-l] Chapter-selected Board seats - brainstorming

Fri May 2 12:24:18 UTC 2008

Hoi,
A chapter is a legal organisation. With such an organisation in place, there
is nothing to stop people from organising locally within the framework of
this orangisation. Having many organisations does not help, it is a drag.
Thanks,
      GerardM

On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 2:03 PM, Wily D <wilydoppelganger at gmail.com> wrote:

> And America, of course, is not the only country terribly unsuited to a
> national chapter.  As noted Russia, but also Canada, Brazil,
> Australia, India and so on make national chapters implausible.
> Vancouver to Halifax is a 4500 km *flight* - even splitting the
> difference and meeting in Winnipeg would mean also every Canadian
> editor would have to fly (perhaps 3% of the population lives within a
> 10 hour drive) Even provincial chapters in Canada would be a terrible
> burdern - Thunder Bay to Toronto (presumably where we'd have Ontario
> meetings) is a mere 1383 km drive along what are probably the worst
> maintained roads south of 60 (you can drive it in ~16 hours if you're
> good at patching a gas tank).  The flights are only 2 hours and $415 -
> this is a nontrivial barrier for a lot of the wikipedia types (I
> certainly couldn't afford that).
>
> A "general solution" for excessively large (and especially excessively
> large, empty countries) is really needed here, so let's not focus too
> much on the American case.
>
> WilyD
>
> On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 7:59 PM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Here are a couple of my notes about chapter organization.
> >
> >  While I was thinking about the most efficient way how to organize WM
> >  Serbia as its president (I am not president of WM RS anymore) at
> >  different cities in Serbia, I had the next situation:
> >
> >  - The biggest cities in Serbia, after Belgrade, are Nis and Novi Sad
> >  (metro area of each of them is between 200 and 300K). Novi Sad is 80km
> >  distant, while Nis is 200km distant. We need something more than an
> >  hour to reach Novi Sad by car and something more than 2 hours to reach
> >  Nis (there is a highway Belgrade-Nis and not finished highway
> >  Belgrade-Novi Sad). By bus it is 2 hours for Novi Sad and 3 hours for
> >  Nis.
> >
> >  - While cars are often in Serbia, they are not so often as in Western
> >  Europe or USA. I think that from 10-15 Wikimedians who participated in
> >  our meetings regularly we had only 2-3 cars. So, much more reasonable
> >  option is to go by bus.
> >
> >  - With a good car in Germany it is possible to pass much bigger
> >  distances than 200km in 3 hours. So, effectively, Serbia is "bigger"
> >  than maybe Benelux and western part of Germany together (there are
> >  places in Serbia for which is needed 7 hours of driving from
> >  Belgrade).
> >
> >  - While it is often to see some people from Novi Sad in Belgrade and
> >  vice versa, it is not something which is done at a regular basis. I
> >  may expect to see one person from Nis who is traveling relatively
> >  regularly -- a couple of time per year. So, more or less, our
> >  coordination with people out of Belgrade metro area was Internet and
> >  telephone based.
> >
> >  - This implies that if WM RS wants to have offices in Belgrade, Nis
> >  and Novi Sad, Wikimedians from those areas need to have a lot of
> >  autonomy. At least, they would need their own bank account and a
> >  person in charge for that account. When they have a bank account, it
> >  would be normal that they organize their own activities, of course, in
> >  coordination with the rest of WM RS. But, speaking generally, this is
> >  a lot of autonomy. The next level of autonomy are separate
> >  organizations.
> >
> >  - BTW, we started as Wikimedia Serbia and Montenegro. We had two
> >  members from Montenegro, but only one of our members (who is living,
> >  btw, in France) went to Montenegro partially as a Wikimedian, but he
> >  didn't success to meet then only one of our members.
> >
> >  So, this is the story about the organization of one chapter which has
> >  transport problems. While I am sure that WM NL chapter doesn't have
> >  such problems, even Netherlands has approximately same size as Serbia
> >  and around three times more inhabitants. However, I am wondering how
> >  much members WM DE has from the eastern part of Germany, south of
> >  Berlin. The same is for WM FR and central-south parts of France, as
> >  well as for WM IT and southern parts Italia, including Sicily (AFAIK,
> >  Sardinia is much less inhabited). (For people from USA, US government
> >  institutions often compares size of Serbia with the size of Kentucky.)
> >
> >  My girlfriend is an architect. She is projecting bank offices all over
> >  Serbia (no, it is not so good position, like it is at the West). Banks
> >  are able to make their organization very effective in the most parts
> >  of Serbia. They have Internet in all of their offices, they have
> >  regular real-life communication. But, while Wikimedia is able to offer
> >  good salaries to a couple of staff, it is not able to offer any penny
> >  to a Wikimedian from one 50.000 inhabitants big town in Serbia, 5
> >  hours of driving distant from Belgrade.
> >
> >  Even a chapter in relatively small country (distance of 7 hours of
> >  driving a car is not a lot) like Serbia is has such amount of
> >  difficulties in organization. OK, it is not impossible to solve them.
> >  However, distances like New York--small town in Illinois or small town
> >  in Moscow--small town in Volgograd oblast -- are so big that it is not
> >  possible to make a functional organization. As I said, I really don't
> >  think that it is possible to have a functional organization inside of
> >  some bigger provinces of some big countries.
> >
> >
> >
> >  _______________________________________________
> >  foundation-l mailing list
> >  foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> >  Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>