[Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)

[Andre Engels]

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 3:44 PM, Andrew Whitworth <wknight8111 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 9:30 AM, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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?
>
> 5 Friends and their dog cannot make a chapter. To become a chapter,
> you need to have critical mass: You need enough people to form a
> board, you need possible members. You need to be able to raise money,
> and you need to be able to perform activities. If we have a situation
> where there are enough Wikimedians in Scramento, Los Angeles, and San
> Jose to each form chapters, we should consider ourselves to be very
> lucky. More likely, to build the critical mass necessary to start a
> new chapter, Wikimedians from all these places may need to work
> together instead of working apart. The smaller the geographical area
> is, the fewer potential members you have, the less money you are
> likely to be able to raise, and the fewer outreach activities you will
> have available to you.

That doesn't change my point, it's just a matter of scale... Suppose
there's a chapter in Georgia, and one for Kentucky and Tennessee. Then
some people come around and start on a chapter for the southeast.
That's going to be a quite strange assortment of states they're going
to represent.


-- 
André Engels, andreengels at gmail.com