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

Sun Nov 2 22:06:47 UTC 2008

About this list and wiki to be created: would the would be chapters with a
chance of being approved before a Board approval on this question be
invited? I am speaking of WM Norway and WM Hungary, that are either already
incorporated or 99% percent likely to finish incorporation process in less
than 3 months' time.
About ChapCom transparency: the ChapCom members have been helpful, but I
don't find their work transparent. How does one chapter get approved by them
(or even the Board) before incorporation, or just faster then the chapters
presenting their bylaws roughly at the same time? Is the slowness in some
cases deliberate to test the endurance and capabilities of a given community
or even a contactperson? I don't think the answer is yes, yet without
transparency and clear criteria, one cannot help to wonder, what is he doing
wrong, and can have no idea how to correct his mistakes if the Chapcom is
not approving the chapter, while other chapters "zoom by" at the same time.

On WM Hrvatska: Hrvatska means Croatia, you guessed right. Last time I
looked at their meta page, the bylaws seemed to be in English. Thus they
might fall into the category of inactive would be chapters.

Best regards,
Bence Damokos

On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 10:32 PM, Michael Bimmler <mbimmler at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 10:12 PM, Dan Rosenthal <swatjester at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > (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.)
> >
>
> And surely, because you're involved with every chapter and/or on the
> ChapCom mailinglist, you are able to make that judgment. (Yes, You
> have been involved with DC. That's a special case, see below).
>
>
> > 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.
> >
>
> This is untrue. The issue of sub-national chapters has been discussed
> for a long time intra-ChapCom (because it is not a light issue which
> can be decided about in a couple days, sorry). We have also solicited
> board input for quite some time, but the board was for a long time not
> really willing to make principal decisions on this matter. This has
> now changed and a general framework has, for the first time, been
> developed. which is good and which also means that we can now really
> work on the approval of sub-national chapters.
>
> > Currently there are only 18 chapters (excluding UK). There should be
> > far more, and I seriously suspect the Chapters Committee is the problem.
> >
>
> How so? Could it not also be that the Chapter groups themselves are
> somewhat less than active? Back when we founded WmCH, yes, I
> considered ChapCom to be a "barrier" too and a slowly rising one,
> alas. But now that I believe to know both sides, I think that ChapCom
> has become much faster and more organised, not least also due to the
> great work by our new communications advisor (and general reminder
> person) Peter / privatemusings.
>
> > WM Venezuela still drafting bylaws since November 2006
>
> Well, yes. With all due respect, what do you expect us to do? We can't
> draft bylaws *for the chapters*, for this, we'd need to know all the
> legislations of the world, which we don't. We can only afterwards look
> at the scope/aim/goal part of the bylaws but they really have to
> figure all the practical proceduralities themselves.
>
> > WM Canada has been "finishing up by-laws" since March.
>
> Yes. I happen to be on the wikimedia-canada list and, from what I see
> there, not all too much is going on. See, there is a limited amount of
> things Chapcom can do: We're always happy to help with advice, and
> yes, we might need to get more proactive, but we can't "replace a
> community". Either people are there and willing to do this or they
> aren0t.
>
> > WM Hrvatske (Croatia I assume? The page says something about Zagreb)
> > has been translating bylaws since December last year.
>
> We can't help much here, not speaking Croatian. If they have serious
> problems, I believe the WMF would consider a request for the funding
> of professional translations.
>
> > WM India still in bylaws discussion since November of last year.
> as above.
>
> > WM Norge listed as awaiting approval since July.
>
> The ChapCom has already been voting on this, but the vote had been
> stalled, as somehow, our new membership resolution had not been
> considered by the board and therefore, we suspended voting until
> knowing who was actually entitled to vote and who not. This has now
> been cleared, we expect that the board can vote on Norge at its next
> meeting.
>
> > WM Portugal listed as "bylaws ready, discussing how to constitute"
> > since March.
>
> This strikes me as odd, similarly to Thomas. But we're glad to provide
> help if approached, but in many cases, we don't even have email
> address etc. from people so it's much easier for us, if they write a
> mail to *our non-filtered mailinglist* chapterscommittee-l at
> wikimedia punto org
>
> > 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.
> >
>
> as explained above - sub-national chapters had been not individually
> considered until the general framework was set. We now have this and
> there is also a sub-national chapters working group, so I expect this
> to be dealt with speedily.
>
> > 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.
> >
>
> I'm not sure whether this is really the major issue here. We can't
> guide every chapter in a step-by-step procedure "Now you do this, now
> you do that, now you do that". On the one hand, there are too many
> local specialities, which rather require input from lawyers or
> law-savvy people from these jurisdictions (ahem, Wikimedia UK, I
> wouldn't know how ChapCom could have helped much there, we know zero
> about UK Company Law...), on the other hand, it *must* be possible. I
> have seen many chapters form without any "real-time guidance" by
> ChapCom (in fact, I co-established one in that manner) and it *does*
> work. It needs an active community, a few people who really want to
> invest time in doing tedious things like writing bylaws and
> translating them, it requires local meetups etc. etc. But, as much as
> we enjoy giving advice, we cannot be "facilitators" for every local
> group, I can't write bylaws for WM Venezuela and I can't organise a
> pub-wikimeet for Wikimedia Canada (random examples, no offence).
>
> > 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.
>
> Well, maybe you should have a look at how many chapters were approved
> in the last 9 months. Quite a few, I daresay. And this, although
> ChapCom takes its role seriously and actually considers all bylaws in
> depth before submitting an official recognition to the board.
>
>
> > The fact that people even think that sort of
> > thing speaks for itself that the Chapters Committee has failed on some
> > level.
>
> On a PR level, possibly. That's why I am very glad that we have
> privatemusings with us now.
>
> >
> > The Local Chapter FAQ has a "Do not translate until ChapCom has had an
> > opportunity to update it" message since Feb. 2006.
> >
>
> Ouch. I'm sure many people have noted this now and we'll have a look at
> this.
>
> > 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.
> >
>
> Why, that's not good, I agree. But it can't be that bad, because we
> still do get mails which simply say "Dear ChapCom, this <permalink>
> are the English translations of our bylaws, please review and comment
> and then approve, if you may". And this is exactly how it should be
> done. If you want to, you can write two sentences to that effect on
> meta to make it a bluelink. Else, we'll see that we can do it as soon
> as someone finds time. But it's a wiki.
>
>
> > These are just some of the criticisms of the chapters process.
> >
>
> I tried to address them as detailedly as possibly (although we might
> want to make a new thread for further discussion of it), hope this
> helps.
>
> Michael
>
>
>
> --
> Michael Bimmler
> mbimmler at gmail.com
>
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