On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 9:18 PM, Sam Klein sjklein@hcs.harvard.edu wrote:
Thanks, Bence and Greg. I appreciate all of the thought going into this. Can you describe the groups that might have been problematic as UGs? I think both becoming and stopping to be a UG should be a simple process.
Thanks Sam - your thinking is always refreshing.
I believe, I and Greg have mentioned a few examples without naming names, but in general, the question we ask is whether a group is genuine (i.e. are they who they say they are; are they part of the Wikimedia community), do they mean well (i.e. do they want to make a quick buck with the name or some quick grant and disappear, or are they genuinely trying to further the mission), and often can they be a constructive part of the movement (a sort of human, interpersonal factor that takes more time to ascertain where groups that have relationships with other groups or where they have "non-standard" relationships with us).
Also, somewhat unfortunately in my view, there is a requirement for user groups is to have a "history of projects", which was not further defined, but in theory makes it impossible to form a user group before there has been a "history". Defining this requirement and whether any "non-standard" (as compared to existing examples) group meets the requirement creates a whole meta process in each process where by executing the process we are defining what the outcome (i.e. user groups) are supposed to be. I wish this could be a one man job, as there would be so much more agreement, but perhaps the results would be less optimal then when we rely on the consensus of a committee with years of experience and a multitude of viewpoints.
In any case, the more automation and simplification we can introduce into the process, the better. Unfortunately, those that are first in some way, will have to live through the meta process while we check the boxes, but they get to write history the same way supreme court cases do :)
Best regards, Bence