[Foundation-l] "Expertise" board seats: the NomCom invites your feedback

[Dan Rosenthal]

(Note, I said approvals and development. The lack of involvement by  
ChapCom in the active development of chapters is even more concerning  
than the lack of transparency in the approvals process.)

Well for one thing, when I first started questioning the idea of why  
there were no US chapters either nationally or subnationally (this was  
before the Pennsylvania chapter started) i was told that it simply  
wasn't going to happen, that the Chapters Committee could not decide  
what they wanted to do, and that in fact there was direct opposition  
on the committee towards certain countries or regions forming chapters.

Currently there are only 18 chapters (excluding UK). There should be  
far more, and I seriously suspect the Chapters Committee is the problem.

WM Venezuela still drafting bylaws since November 2006
WM Canada has been "finishing up by-laws" since March.
WM Hrvatske (Croatia I assume? The page says something about Zagreb)  
has been translating bylaws since December last year.
WM India still in bylaws discussion since November of last year.
WM Norge listed as awaiting approval since July.
WM Portugal listed as "bylaws ready, discussing how to constitute"  
since March.
WM NYC still figuring things out since Jan. 07,
WM Penn. still listed as figuring stuff out since June 07.
WM DC has not heard a peep from the chapters committee since May.

Nine chapters languishing in development for an unacceptable length of  
time. This is not to say that the chapters themselves hold no  
responsibility, but I've seen no evidence of the Chapters Committee  
proactively reaching out to say "What can we do to help you guys get  
moving". I suspect if they did, we'd have quite a few more chapters.

A couple of Wikimeetups ago, I discussed with some people what their  
interests in developing a chapter were. Quite a few people expressed  
no interest, either because they believed the Chapters Committee was  
unable or unwilling to help, or because they simply believed that it  
was impossible for them to get a chapter approved and they didn't want  
to waste the effort. The fact that people even think that sort of  
thing speaks for itself that the Chapters Committee has failed on some  
level.

The Local Chapter FAQ has a "Do not translate until ChapCom has had an  
opportunity to update it" message since Feb. 2006.

The Chapter Creation Guide has not been updated in over a year.
In over two years of existence, the line that says "The details of  
this process are given in the [[Chapter approval process]] document."  
are STILL a red link. So prospective chapters have ZERO idea of what  
the approval process is.

These are just some of the criticisms of the chapters process.

-Dan

On Nov 2, 2008, at 2:06 PM, Michael Bimmler wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 7:42 PM, Dan Rosenthal <swatjester at gmail.com>  
> wrote:
>
>> There's no excuse for blaming the chapters or the people in them when
>> the system for developing and approving them is fundamentally flawed.
>>
>
>
> Can you expand on this? Seriously...I have heard many criticism on
> various parts of the Wikimedia "movement", but the chapter approvals
> process was, I thought, considered to be working all right. What's
> wrong with it?
>
> M.
>
> -- 
> Michael Bimmler
> mbimmler at gmail.com
>
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