[Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)

[Thomas Dalton]

2009/1/20 Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com>:
> On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 2:47 PM, Andrew Whitworth <wknight8111 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Two answers to this question:
>> 1) WMNYC does prevent the creation of a separate WMUSA chapter. At the
>> moment the rule-of-thumb is that chapters cannot overlap. However, it
>> may be possible in the future if both groups agree to share space, but
>> we haven't had an issue like that and I can't imagine the benefit of
>> doing it that way.
>
> Well, one benefit would be that it avoids strange definitions of
> chapter boundaries. Suppose that we have a Los Angeles chapter and a
> Monterey County chapter, and then people from San Jose, Sacramento and
> a few smaller cities come together to make a chapter, would this then
> be "Wikimedia California except Los Angeles City and Monterey County"?
> Or should it perhaps also be restricted to not include San Francisco,
> since perhaps there will be a city chapter there, and created the
> "California-except" chapter would make such impossible?

It does seem odd to me that there is a New York City chapter rather
than a New York chapter. As I understand it, companies in the US are
registered at state level. State boundaries are far more clearly
defined (yes, I'm sure there is a legal definition of NYC, but it
doesn't sound like the chapter are using it). The state of New York
isn't overly large compared with the area under the remit of other
existing chapters. So why doesn't this chapter represent the whole of
the state? I really can't see any reason for it not to.