On Sun, Jun 1, 2014 at 12:17 AM, Leigh Thelmadatter osamadre@hotmail.com wrote:
Obviously, having more user groups would be great, but we do not
currently
know how many are not being created due to the process. It is entirely possible, that the creation of active user groups (without further investments and interventions into seeding communities) is currently maxed out already.
This cannot be true because we know of at least one group with established contact, a web page and a history of projects which is NOT recognized. If even one group, especially one with a track record, is being marginalized under the current process, that process needs to be looked at.
Leigh, I understand your frustration, and I am sorry that the recognition process for your group has not finished yet, nor have we given a definite answer. For the purposes of this public discussion a focus on the more general topic may be helpful. The marginal utility of publicly poking us is decreasing fast and slowly turning into the negative, I am afraid. We may take it as read that AffCom is not perfect.
If I understand the rest of Bence's email, the issues seem to be that 1) approving more groups may mean a higher rate of failure and 2) more groups means that resources (time, money) will be taken from established groups. If these are the main concerns, why create the categories of thematic groups and user groups in the first place? Why does AffComm place a higher priority on already-recognized groups over those looking already working but lacking the same status? Is anyone on AffCom not already part of a chapter or other recognized affiliate? If not, who speaks for those who are still outside the system?
My main point was that there is more to creating an ecosystem of successful user groups than just recognising more groups. There is a need for an extended support system, and the movement is putting more and more attention towards this issue in recent years -- the liaison system that this thread is originally about is one such step that the AffCom is working on, but there is a wider picture with on-going efforts by other volunteers, chapters, and the WMF. Similarly, there is an on-going, perhaps multi-year conversation around what level of resources to channel into this area -- perhaps one of the main outcomes, thanks to the support of the WMF, is that AffCom is given more resources to work with (access to staff and Board; ability to provide scholarships and endorse grants, etc.).
In these developments and processes, it is important to note that there does not seem to be a constraint, where support to one type of affiliate limits available support to other types of affiliates. There is however a possible constraint in the overall number of affiliates we could handle with the current levels of resources and structures and we have not bumped into those caps yet, and will likely won't in the foreseeable future. Changing the rate at which we add new affiliates from dozens a year to say a hundred, would be a change that could strain our systems -- a change that would be worth it if we had hundreds of Wikimedia communities that we could empower thusly.
You can learn more about the background of AffCom members at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliations_Committee/Members, you will see that people come with diverse background, but nobody is there to represent a particular niche, per se. We do try to consider what the various stakeholders might think, and then we usually ask them to check if we were correct (like in the recent RFC on user group logos, or the sessions we had with the attendees and WMF Board at the Wikimedia Conference in Berlin).
Best regards, Bence