[Foundation-l] Board resolutions (chapters)

[Florence Devouard]

Michael Snow wrote:
> Lars Aronsson wrote:
>> Florence Devouard wrote:
>>   
>>> The confusion mostly came from the fact I had absolutely not 
>>> understood that chapters at the national level, or chapter at 
>>> any other level would have exactly the same rights and roles 
>>> than the currently existing chapters.
>>>     
>> I'm confused by your description of chapters as a tool for "having 
>> rights" or "having roles". I'm also skeptic to the chapters voting 
>> for board members of the foundation. That is a privilege that I 
>> never asked for.  (This is just my personal view.)



We know that chapters hold different roles, but most of these roles 
focus around
* collecting money which may be used for the projects good
* informing the public about the projects, open source, free knowledge 
etc...
* being a public face whenever it is necessary, in particular in front 
of the press, public institutions, governments

These roles could be held by simple individuals, but it would be much 
tougher. Can you imagine yourself, as an independant person, raising 
money for the projects, collecting the money on your bank account and 
then shipping the money to the USA ?
I guess not.
By and large, the role of the chapters is simply to provide a framework, 
a squelettum, to make it easier for wikimedians to *do things* that they 
can not easily do as individuals.
That may go from "having a bank account to raise money" to "providing 
semi-business cards making it easier to talk to museum directors" or 
"providing a room to hold a photo-workshop" or "bringing leaflets to a 
conference".

Note that in my mind, the chapters do not restrict the plateform to 
their members. The members of the chapters run the plateform. But the 
plateform may be used by a much larger membership. As such, the activity 
of the chapter benefit a very large community and not only its legal 
membership.

--> The main role is of being a facilitating plateform.


The main right of the chapter is the one of using the brand (such as 
having the right to be called Wikimedia xxx, a sign of recognition that 
we belong to the family).

And forgive me if I dare a biological comparison.

Do you know that your body hosts millions, if not billions of bacteria ? 
At first glance, these bacteria are not very useful.

Then, if you look more carefully, some of these bacterias play very 
important direct roles, such as in digestion.
In other cases, in particular for microorganisms living on your skin, it 
is really not obvious what those are useful for.

But after further considerations, you will realize that the role of 
those is simply... to be there. To occupy the place. And prevent other 
microorganisms, nasty ones, from colonizing the place.

My argument would be that the chapters second the Foundation in 
protecting the brand ... in making sure that it is used for "positive" 
reasons (going in the direction of our commonly agreed vision), and 
making sure it is NOT used for wrong directions.
Straight example: Wikimedia France owns and protect "wikipedia.fr".
Wikimedia Russia could own wikipedia.ru (which is for sale)
If Wikimedia Spain existed, it could have protected the domain and 
avoided that: http://wikipedia.es/
Locally, simply by existing, and by being a focus, institutions will 
come to chapters rather to going to random wikipedians. And by going to 
a group clearly identified and unified by a clear mission and shared 
values, institutions will hear about this mission and these values.
When no local focus exist, and WMF is so far away, across the globe, 
sharks gather and act in way which do not reflect what we desire our 
projects to be.

As such, I would consider that...

The second main role of the chapter is to protect what can and need to 
be protected, such as our logo, our name, our licence, our mission, our 
values, our dream. I believe participating to electing our WMF trustees 
participate to this role of protection (but this might not be commonly 
agreed).

Ant