[Wikimedia-l] Proposed Wikimedia Medicine Thematic Organisation

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

Tomasz Ganicz, 14/10/2012 22:36:
> 2012/10/14 James Heilman:
>> Thematic organizations have the same amount of authority over content on
>> Wikipedia as chapters. To spell this out clearly that means NONE. One does
>> not put these sorts of details in a NGOs by laws however this will be
>> clearly described in the policies once incorporated.
>>
>
> Authority - none - but as the main goal of chapters is just to support
> Wikimedia projects and communities as a whole rather without any
> direct influence over project's content or rules of the projects,
> thematic associations are clearly about the content of projects as
> such. If Wikimedia Medicine activity had no any impact over medical
> content of Wikipedias there would not have any sense to have such
> organization :-)

By the way that's also the point of the discussion on en.wiki mentioned 
by Bence.[1] (Again, I'm just taking this as an example.)
This is exactly why thematic organisations need not a less clear, but a 
more clear, general rule/line of demarcation than chapters.
Now that I think of it, you'll also need something about the visibility 
you can get on Wikimedia projects: sitenotices, notices of all sort, 
even just templates "this article/whatever was 
supported/provided/rubberstamped by entity X" tend to be subject to 
controversies. ChapCom/AffCom will know better and you can build on 
years of experience of chapters. ;-)

Nemo

[1] Permanent link: 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Iridescent&oldid=516388768#arbitrary_break_2> 

Where doubts like «it will become a meta-arbitration committee for 
medical issues» are raised.