[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Pennsylvania

[Filip Maljkovic]

Andrew Whitworth wrote:
> I'm cross-posting this message to both the foundation-l and the 
> now-defunct wikimediaus-l lists. Many people here may already be aware 
> of the new Wikimedia Pennsylvania chapter that is in active 
> development, either from the various pages that have sprung up on meta 
> from it, from our blog on the planet, or from word of mouth.
>
> For those who are not aware, We are working to create a local chapter 
> for the Pennsylvania area. It will be the first state chapter, and 
> possibly the first north american chapter (unless the canadian chapter 
> can get rolling before we do). Our chapter is going to be focused 
> primarily on a grass-roots community outreach effort, in an attempt to 
> drum up both new contributors and new content consumers. Some of the 
> people we would like to target initially are public school systems 
> (including the financially-distressed Philadelphia area school 
> district, which could benefit significantly from a free textbook 
> alternative), universities, and community organizations. We would also 
> like to do some fundraising, but the extent to which we have organized 
> fundraisers is yet to be determined.
>
> We are instituting an open membership policy: No membership fees, and 
> no residential requirements on membership. Due to the 
> community-oriented mission of the chapter people from distant areas 
> may have a difficulty participating, but we do not intend to 
> disenfranchise anybody because of their geographical location. We are 
> hoping that this policy will help to get many people involved, will 
> help other state chapters get started, and will serve as an 
> organizational model for future state chapters.
>
> We have created a new mailinglist for the chapter at wikimediapa-l. We 
> have an irc chatroom on freenode (#Wikimedia-pa), and a homepage on 
> meta: [[meta:Wikimedia Philadelphia]]. People who are interested in 
> more information can turn to any of these sources. We will be 
> submitting the first draft of our bylaws to the chapters committee 
> soon (hopefully in a week or two) and are already looking at the 
> paperwork to become 503(c) (although that step will be saved for the 
> future when we see how well the chapter is working out).
>
> --Andrew Whitworth
Well, this is certainly good news. Great thing going, guys. One remark, 
though: I'm not quite sure (future) US chapters should have 
abbreviations that way. When I saw wikimediapa-l, I thought of Wikimedia 
Pakistan (although, PA stands for Panama, the point is the same). 
Because of the two-letter-codes overlapping with the US TLCs, it might 
be wise to introduce something like wikimediaus-pa-l (likewise for the 
IRC channel) or anything else that would make it clear that the TLC 
isn't of a country, but of a US state.

Thanks,
Filip