Dear all,
Allow me, from my personal experiences, to bring into conscience what it
means to "be" or to represent a Wikimedia affiliate, whether it is a
chapter, a thematic organization or a WM user group.
It is a great honour to be active in a Wikimedia affiliate.
Affiliates, a chapter for example, are trusted with the use of important
trademarks and logos. For many people who are unfamiliar with the movement,
a chapter is the first contact point with everything regarding "Wikipedia".
Government and other institutions cooperate with chapters. The people
responsible in a chapter have to decide on budgets and reglements and many
other things, with effect to people inside and outside the chapter.
But what if a chapter fails?
Think of a museum that wants to cooperate with "Wikipedia" in a specific
language, and approaches the chapter related. If the chapter fails to
reply, if the museum never gets an answer of any kind even after several
attempts via different communication channels - that is a catastrophe for
the reputation of the chapter, but also for the Wikipedia language version
in question.
Or think of a volunteer who wants to organize something on an international
scale, and invites other chapters (and affiliates) to join. What if her
inclusionist approach is rewarded with deafening silence because chapter
representants are inactive but too proud to admit that?
I am a member of WMNL and WMDE. But even if I were not, these organizations
and the WMF represent me and my work on Wikipedia to the outside world. I
want them to be accountable to minimum standards - I think that I deserve
that as a Wikipedia volunteer. And I want to travel to other countries and
meet museum people and hear from them: "Wikimedia? Yes, we work together
with a Wikimedia user group here, those folks do great a great job."
It cannot be surprising that I was very happy to read Carlos' mail. I'm not
sure whether we are quite there yet, and one issue remains how to
effectively support affiliates even more, and how to provide appropriate
resources. But - whether such investions make sense depends also from the
affiliate.
Kind regards
Ziko
Am Donnerstag, 25. August 2016 schrieb Delphine MĂ©nard :
On 24 August 2016 at 22:50, Michael Peel
<email(a)mikepeel.net
<javascript:;>> wrote:
This process seems to be very harsh as written.
For example, it says:
"an organization’s recognition may be terminated immediately
according to the group's agreement (without Board review or appeal)"
There's no mention of any sort of
ombudsperson, or appeal process in
this document. Presumably this is delegated to
the individual group
agreements, but it would be good to see that explicitly mentioned in this
process document. There are other examples elsewhere in the process that I
won't go into here. But I think this process needs rewriting to make it
fairer to all parties.
I don't think it's harsh. Experience proves that "trying to get in
touch" and "trying to put together a plan" is a very lengthy process,
and takes months, if not years. In short, every attempt I have seen at
actually making sure a chapter / group was really inexistent before
entering the last phase of derecognition has been more than thorough
(from many emails to activating personal contacts to everything you
can think of to get in touch with people). You do have to draw the
line somewhere though, and at some point get "harsh" and have hard
deadlines. An appeal process would mean having someone at the other
end of the line. More often than not, this is not the case. I think
it's important that we know to "terminate", because dormant entities
often prevent new people from rekindling motivation and starting anew.
Best,
Delphine
--
@notafish
NB. This gmail address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails will get
lost.
Intercultural musings: Ceci n'est pas une endive -
http://blog.notanendive.org
Photos with simple eyes: notaphoto -
http://photo.notafish.org
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