First of all, thanks to the AffCom for defining the criteria. I am positively surprised and impressed that they managed to do it since Wikimania when I was told in a private chat that I could forget about having my user group recognised as a chapter this year. Thank you all, who made this possible in such a short time!
I've taken the pains of reading the whole discussion and it seems that there are two main points of discussion: - quantitative vs qualitative criteria and - the possibility to transform chapters in user groups and disband user groups.
I strongly oppose to only quantitative criteria. Some have to be in place and I expect the AffCom to define meaningful quantitative criteria for the recognition of user groups and chapters, but I expect that a group of serious and experienced community members has the right to overwrite the quantitative criteria if considered needed. This way the communities will know what to aim at, but if the standard aims are not suitable for the cultural and/or political context of the place where they act, exceptions must be allowed.
Organisation should be transformable and the criteria should hold for everyone. There already is a process of deciding who is allowed to send representatives to the Wikimedia Conference and something similar should be set up for the upgrading and downgrading of organisations.
This said, I would gladly see user groups and chapters getting as similar rights and responsibilities as possible. I do not understand why a rather inactive chapter can send 2 to 4 delegates to the Wikimedia Conference, have a vote for affiliate-elected WMF seats and be allowed to sign the trademark agreement, while a very active user group can send 1 delegate, cannot decide on the future of the WMF BoT and has to go through a tedious process every time they wish to use the Wikimedia logo and name. This way aspiring user groups are being deprived of possibilities to develop and by doing that to enable the creation of more free content even faster. Imagine a chapter with five active Wikimedians and a user group with ten. These exist.
Best regards, Nikola / User:Lord Bumbury Wikimedians of Bulgaria User Group
On Thu, Aug 25, 2016 at 3:18 PM, Ilario Valdelli valdelli@gmail.com wrote:
Hi, I appreciate the effort, it's interesting but there should more flexibility in my opinion.
All is relative. Probably in Estonia, to do an outdoor activity, people must wait more time than buying a loaf of bread in Venezuela. Depending on the variable everyone has more difficulties than another, but it's different to divide the world into good and bad.
Some criteria should be meet, I agree, but the flexibility and more a matrix of criteria makes sense.
The biggest problem in a general concept of rules is to introduce global rules that can kill the diversity.
They will help to have standardized and well defined entities and easy to monitor, but also similar and undifferentiated entities.
To measure a maturity of a model the best would be to introduce a combination of variables and not only three. It would be good to have, let's say, three different parameters for each areas to have at least 9 different standards as a combination.
I think that a more flexible criteria can be a valid support.
Kind regards
On Sat, Aug 20, 2016 at 8:22 PM, Carlos M. Colina maorx@wikimedia.org.ve wrote:
Hello Pine,
El 19/08/2016 a las 06:28 p.m., Pine W escribió:
Hi Carlos,
In general, I like the new criteria.
I would like to suggest making the criteria entirely quantitative, so
that
there is minimal subjectivity about whether or not affiliates are meeting these standards and therefore there is likely to be less controversy
about
the status of affiliates.
The problem of making the criteria entirely quantitative is that the context where affiliates operate is not the same across the world. We cannot apply a rigid, based in fixed numbers criteria because the
situation
of Estonia or The Netherlands, to give an example, is not the same of Venezuela, where people need to queue for hours just to buy a loaf of bread, if they happen to be lucky enough to find a bakery operating, or where scheduled 4-hour daily blackouts are the norm across the country except for the capital.
If all affiliates operated in the same conditions, that would be another story.
--
Ilario Valdelli Wikimedia CH Verein zur Förderung Freien Wissens Association pour l’avancement des connaissances libre Associazione per il sostegno alla conoscenza libera Switzerland - 8008 Zürich Wikipedia: Ilario https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ilario Skype: valdelli Tel: +41764821371 http://www.wikimedia.ch _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe