[Foundation-l] WMF Chapter Development Director job posting

Mon Aug 23 07:19:40 UTC 2010

Hoi,
The USA is a sizeable country. But it is not unique in that. Russia is
certainly bigger and India is certainly more populous. Both Russia and India
have one chapter.

When the Wikimedia Foundation runs a project, it should be obvious that such
a project can be easily understood from its perspective. For me the WMF is a
worldwide organisation and consequently its actions should be acceptable
from that perspective. When the WMF runs a "pilot" project like the current
public policy project, it should therefore conform with its global
perspective. Given that it is about SUBJECT MATTER whose appreciation
differs from country to country it is weird that no "foreign" universities
are part of this project. It is also easy to argue that from a cost point of
view, this project requires less funding when it is run in many other
countries. The fact that it is run only in the USA also has NPOV
implications.

The issue is that when there is an USA chapter and this project was run by
the chapter, such reservations would not be as potent. Mixing national and
international priorities is not appropriate.
Thanks,
       GerardM

On 23 August 2010 08:56, Keegan Peterzell <keegan.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have to chime in to echo that the size of the USA and the fact that it is
> populated throughout is an issue for a general USA chapter.  I attended a
> meetup in Nashville, Tennessee, which had people from five states and it
> was
> a seven hour drive for me, and I was in a state next to it.  Going to DC in
> January was equally interesting, I had to fly in to visit and that's not
> even half a country away.  The US is a different creature, I have no advice
> on chapter organization here.
>
>
> --
> ~Keegan
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan
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