[Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)

[Andrew Whitworth]

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 5:52 PM, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> It was my understanding from the sub-national chapters document that
> such chapters might be permitted to form anyway:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Sub-national_chapters
> (Question: "Aren't we setting up sub-national chapters to compete for
> funding with nation-based chapters?")

The sub-national chapters document did hint that overlapping wasn't a
problem, but enough "what if" disaster scenarios have been suggested
that we are probably not going to approve any overlapping chapters
anyway. At least, not yet.

> What I'm taking your statement to mean is that when a subnational
> chapter is formed where a national chapter could be later formed, the
> overlap and potential harmful consequences of such overlap would have
> to be carefully considered before national chapter is approved. Would
> that be a fair characterization? Or are you meaning 'is not possible'
> truly in the sense of 'will never happen'?

I suspect it's not "will never happen", but instead is "should only
happen after very careful consideration and agreement". If there is a
country with an existing sub-national chapter and an organization
effort to create a national one, I think we would all suggest that the
subnational chapter redefine it's region to become a national chapter,
instead of allowing two separate groups to overlap. Even if it's not a
"problem", it still seems like a needless waste of effort for two
groups to be doing the same things in the same region.

--Andrew Whitworth