[Wikimedia-l] Info: Election for WCA Chairperson

[Jan-Bart de Vreede]

Hey Ziko

No actually we did not agree on that. We agreed that there were several reasons that chapters might not join the Chapters Association. Again: i do not know all the specifics and cannot give you the arguments for the chapters that did not join, but some certainly voiced a reluctance to become part of a membership organisation within the Wikimedia Movement, simply because they felt it was a bit much)

And I am not sure that creating a membership model within a group of approved chapters (who have therefore already passed the AffCom test) can be described as a "democratic model". You are creating an preferred status. You could argue that it is much more democratic to give all the approved organisations a vote. After all the Chapters Association intends to help all chapters with the exchange of knowledge of skills… regardless of wether they are a member or not (that was the last status I heard).

Jan-Bart



On Feb 25, 2013, at 1:13 AM, Ziko van Dijk <vandijk at wmnederland.nl> wrote:

> Jan-Bart, what you call a 'membership model' is a democratically
> established international NGO in which members have rights and obligations.
> It operates under a charter accepted by the chapters that joined. Maybe you
> would like to read the charter first, or think about the way the WMF (!)
> approves new chapters, or consider to improve the democratic character of
> the WMF before trying to undermine the WCA as such. I thought that we
> agreed in London that many chapters did not join because they now busy with
> other things.
> Ziko
> 
> 
> Am Montag, 25. Februar 2013 schrieb Fae :
> 
>> @Jan-Bart
>> One of the early discussions before agreeing the WCA charter was the
>> possibility of automatically counting all legally recognized chapters
>> as members. It was felt that this would not result in a credible
>> democratic process, indeed the current 21 members are not all very
>> active in votes and the current voting pattern shows participation at
>> around 2/3 of the members or less in any vote. If we counted all
>> Chapters, then a quorum would have to be set to be artificially
>> low.<
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Chapters_Association/Resolutions/2012_votes
>>> 
>> 
>> Should any Chapter wish to vote in this election, they need only
>> provide a statement to me and then the new Council member sends in a
>> statement that they support the charter. The Council member need not
>> be on the board of the Chapter. There are no fees, there are no
>> specific duties and we are always looking for more light-weight ways
>> of handing our processes. Any Council member recognized before the
>> vote opens, will be eligible to vote.
>> 
>> @Newyorkbrad
>> My original thought was to allow an overall three week process, but
>> was put under pressure to do this quickly to make a clear
>> demonstration that I was going; however I would guess that opening the
>> election does this rather than bringing forward the deadline to close
>> it. I will take a look at the schedule again later today and
>> reconsider the deadlines. In practice, I have had the opposite
>> feedback from Council members, who thought that allowing 2 weeks for a
>> vote as our past custom, was unnecessarily long.
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Fae
>> --
>> Ashley Van Haeften (Fae) faewik at gmail.com <javascript:;>
>> Chapters Association Council Chair http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WCA
>> Guide to email tags: http://j.mp/mfae
>> 
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> 
> 
> -- 
> 
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