[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Kosovo Chapter? Re: Fwd: SFK100 Press Release

[Milos Rancic]

On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 19:13, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> If the Kosovans are willing to wait, it would be make our lives much
> easier if we wait until the international community makes up their
> minds, but that could take a while (it's been 2.5 years already).

I started to analyze the situation, but I've realized that the
conclusion is the same as Tomas' one, while worded from another angle:
there is no definite conclusion and presently all of them include
possibilities for making harm to one of the sides, including WMF.

The most important harm which exists now is the fact that free
knowledge activists from Kosovo are not included yet into the
Wikimedia movement. So, until the situation becomes more clear, we
should think how to solve that problem.

And we have tools to do that. Let's call them to internal-l (for
example, to ask FLOSSK, as any WM chapter to delegate five members to
the internal-l and chapters-l), let's treat their events as friendly
ones (I was in Pristina, Gerard and Siebrand have already been at
their event in Albania -- yes, free software and free knowledge
activists from Kosovo are responsible for organizing those events in
Albania -- but without WMF's official support), let's give to a couple
of them scholarships for the next Wikimanias, etc.

BTW, political connotation in such cases could be avoided if WMF is
extensively recognizing sub-national chapters. However, it is not the
case. The product is that just well organized Catalan group is able to
follow current trends inside of the Wikimedia movement. I can imagine
how many obstacles have many other Wikimedian groups all over the
world. And we need to find a temporary solution for such cases.

Unlike in the case of Kosovo, which has some chances to become a UN
member in the future, probably hundreds of other groups would have to
be permanently content with the "temporary solution". In some of the
cases even willingness of ChapCom to recognize sub-national or
cross-national chapters won't help.