[Foundation-l] Sub-national chapters Q&A

[Michael Snow]

Andrew Whitworth wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 9:02 PM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> From your e-mail, Michael, I take it that the formation of a national
>> Wikimedia chapter in the United States would not be opposed by the Board?
>> There are many structures such an organization could take in order to limit
>> the impact of geographic scope, including having subordinate "east" and
>> "west" units that work under the national umbrella.
>>     
> I don't think the board has expressed any particular opposition to the
> idea of a USA national chapter. In reality, there has been so little
> volunteer activity in creating one that the board has probably written
> it off as a very unlikely event. There are going to be subnational
> chapters in the USA long before critical mass builds behind the idea
> of making a national one.
>   
There's no opposition to a national chapter for the US, correct. Or, to 
look at it in a different way, in the past people have wondered if the 
Wikimedia Foundation itself would act as the national US chapter. The 
answer to that is no, the Wikimedia Foundation is purely the global 
organization to support our projects. It happens to be based in the US 
because that's most convenient, but otherwise it's not intended to be 
nation-specific.

--Michael Snow