[Wikimedia-l] Strange, surprising, bold and unnecessary - reply to the WMF board statement

[Nathan]

>
> >
>
> It's a viable point, and I partly agree with it. But the comparison I would
> offer is this- this is or was, supposed to be a support organization for 40
> chapters, some of them had budgets that were nearing or over 1 million USD.
> They had several staff members, support personnel - how can you expect a
> back-office, support organization for 40 chapters that was envisioned to be
> self-sufficient some day, be smaller than the first 5 or 10 chapters they
> were supporting.
>
>
I'm more inclined to criticize the budget and spending priorities of the
WMF, to tell the truth. The various budgets for the WCA primarily went
wrong in assuming that the WMF itself would provide the cash, a truly odd
plan given the role the WCA's boosters saw for it. My own opinion is that
it was that intermediary, adversary role (which one person recently
compared to a union opposing corporate interests) that doomed the WCA. But
there is a good point to make about the envisioned support role. It's
difficult to understand how a single lawyer, or a single firm, was intended
to provide legal support of any utility to chapters in 40 countries. And
pitching the WCA's level of professionalism at a degree to where it could
help out the largest chapters seems like an odd strategy, when it's the
smallest and newest that would need the kind of help the WCA could provide.

As a lot of other people have said, there is clearly a role out there for a
support organization that helps chapters develop. But I don't think the
WCA, as it has been modeled, is the right organization for that role. I
don't know if it is the people who were involved at various points, or the
environment in the movement at the time a formal body was proposed, but the
attitude and approach for the WCA has been wrong for a long time and the
WMF is right to not support the current incarnation.

~Nathan