[Foundation-l] A local chapter without Wikimedians

[Andrew Whitworth]

On Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 7:50 AM, Béria Lima <berialima at gmail.com> wrote:
> Your problem (mine and of the boys) is NOT that have non wikimedians in
> brazilian chapter. Is because that non wikimedians hostilize every
> wikimedian and don't permite anyone discussion... every is taboo.

The problem is that there isn't any real way to judge these situations
prior to chapcom approval. When we get bylaws from a chapter group, we
only know the things that we've been told about the organization, and
the things we've heard by chance. We don't do any kind of
investigation, or go out of our way to solicit feedback from the
community. We also don't have a strict requirement that new chapters
contain any number of active wikimedians. Red flags obviously go up if
we find a group that doesn't contain any, but I'm not sure such a
group couldn't get approved if they tried hard enough under the
current system.

Something like a public hearing over all new bylaws would help to
eliminate these problems, assuming active wikimedians attended such
meetings and raised objections. Of course, having to schedule and
organize such a meeting, even a virtual one over IRC, would
dramatically increase the amount of time that it takes for bylaws to
clear the committee. The Brazil group would have even made this more
difficult because they made it clear to us that they were under time
pressure due to Jimmy's visit. So many chapters have told us that
significant delays in approval by the chapcom and the board have a
chilling effect on a chapter, sometimes an insurmountable one because
of lost enthusiasm and momentum.

The closest solution that I can imagine, and I'm not speaking as a
chapcom member right now, would be to create chapters in some sort of
probationary status for a year or so, before they become "official".
This way we could identify those groups that don't meet our
expectations in practice (as opposed to the "on paper" review they get
now) and rescind their status because of that. It might be worthwhile
for the community to review exactly what requirements are needed to
become and to remain a chapter.

> Someone said for we change the bylaws to protect Wikimedia Brasil. We try
> that, but every time when we tried... We have been silenced with the
> argument: "The Wikimedia approved the bylaws of the way that is"

Chapters are independent organizations and do not need chapcom/WMF
approval to change their bylaws. As Michael says, we usually like to
hear about changes, just as we like to hear about any other news from
chapters. If we become aware of changes that are highly negative we
might review them to see that the chapter still meets our
expectations, but this has never happened so I am only speculating. We
simply don't have the infrastructure to keep track of every change
made by every chapter to their bylaws, their operating procedures, or
their membership composition.

The chapcom is definitely going to discuss this issue, but lots of
feedback and ideas will be appreciated.

--Andrew Whitworth