[Foundation-l] A new proposal regarding US chapters

[Dan Rosenthal]

No, the US does not need one national chapter. This has been gone over  
time and again.  Anthony's strategy provides for a guiding body to  
oversee the local chapters (something that takes too much time and  
effort for the foundation to do, and also something they must be  
separate from for liability reasons), but keeps the emphasis on the  
local chapters, to conduct local events and local outreach, something  
that they can do far better than any national chapter, while national  
stuff can be reserved for the WMF to handle. The national guiding body  
also simplifies the issue of the US local chapters candidates for the  
2 board seats.

It sounds great to me.

-Dan

On May 6, 2008, at 12:38 PM, Henning Schlottmann wrote:

> Anthony wrote:
>
>> Here's my current thoughts on the matter, after talking with you  
>> about
>> it privately.  It's an attempt at a grassroots bottom-up strategy
>> (which both the WMF and the chapters-to-be seem to want) which at the
>> same time attempts to avoid constantly reinventing the wheel.
>
> I don't see the beef. The United States don't need a number of local
> chapters, they need one national chapter to provide for a membership
> organization associated with the Wikimedia Foundation. Local groups  
> can
> form under the national umbrella without being incorporated  
> themselves.
>
> Get the organizers of all local meetups, the Pennsylvanians, the New
> Yorkers and everyone else who ever made some steps to chapterhood
> together on a mailing list, ask around if one of the Wikipedians
> involved is a lawyer who can handle any questions, choose a state  
> where
> to incorporate the chapter (based on locality of a few core members  
> and
> the answers of your lawyer) and set up the chapter. That's not rocket
> science. Wikipedians usually are smart people, you should be able to  
> get
> it done without any problems.
>
> You need a charter, send it to the Foundation to have it approved,  
> send
> it to the state office to have it registered, and that's about it.
>
> Henning [[user:H-stt]]
>
>
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