[Foundation-l] Serbia and Montenegro

[Cormac Lawler]

On 5/24/06, Delphine Ménard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/24/06, arnomane at gmx.de <arnomane at gmx.de> wrote:
>
> > Why not creating a Wikimedia chapter that is a community asociation of
> > croatian, serbian, serbo-croatian ... Wikipedias and which is thus trying to
> > care about all of them?
>
> Because, as stated in the Chapters FAQ, chapters have a country base,
> on the contrary to projects. At some point, you need a legal form of
> some kind, and as far as I know, there is no such thing as a legal
> form that would allow the creation of a Germano-Swiss-Austrian
> chapter, just because they all speak German, or a
> Franco-Canadian-Blegian-Swiss chapter. It'd have to be legally based
> somewhere.
>
[snip]


This is the crucial point - the legal existence of our local chapters.
We had this debate within Wikimedia UK, and whether it was desirable
to to create a Wikimedia British Isles (or whatever it would be
called) - a geographical region where we all speak the same language
(as well as others). I thought then (and still think) that it would be
nice to have such a thing - but the thing was that it would have been,
legally, very difficult, if not impossible to create it. Even more
obscurely, because of the UK's bizarre legal system, we are,
technically, actually bound by the laws of England and Wales - not
Scotland and/or Northern Ireland (if I have understood this
correctly). What I hope will happen, again echoing Delphine, is that a
Wikimedia Ireland chapter will be formed, which will work with
Wikimedia UK on issues of common interest, not least our cultural and
lingual heritage.

Cormac