[Foundation-l] Movement roles letter, Feb 2012

[Theo10011]

On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 5:21 PM, Bishakha Datta <bishakhadatta at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 4:42 PM, Florence Devouard <anthere9 at yahoo.com
> >wrote:
>
> >
> > One benefit I can identify from this decision is that we could push
> > forward that
> > * partner organizations are ONLY recognized by Wikimedia Foundation
> > * whilst chapters could finally push forward the idea that a new chapter
> > has to be recognized by the network of chapter + WMF rather than WMF
> only.
> > In short, a chapter could be an element of a network whilst a partner
> will
> > be only a WMF partner and not necessarily accepted by the network of
> > chapters.
> >
> >
> I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this. How would this benefit
> the movement?
>

While I can't speak of direct harm or benefit for the movement, I would put
some distinction between the recognition process. Chapters have a board and
are open to membership, how partner organizations deal with this issue and
their bylaws is still left open. Before we jump head-first into this,
proper consideration has to be given about the liability and the vetting
procedure for this. As it stands, the approval process seems identical
between chapters and partners organizations, this is not a good thing. It
might be advisable to give more time to the legal dept. and ChapCom to
fully vet the paperwork as it currently does for chapters, since chapters
also carry a higher liability and exposure for the movement, while partner
organizations are relatively independent, whatever their underlying
criteria might be. Partner organization status, if without a formal
registration, can be approved directly by WMF.

It can save a lot of time and effort, and limit a lot of exposure for the
existing chapters, not to mention make the overall process of approving
partner organizations, a simpler one. Chapters have to assimilate into an
existing community of established chapters, their approval can only enforce
and support the new entity. We also have to decide if we want all these
future organizations bunched up together, or if they will have a tiered
approach to their relationship.

There's probably a better reason, but this was the one that came to me.

Regards
Theo