[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Pennsylvania

Fri Jul 13 02:10:09 UTC 2007

<quote who="Jimmy Wales" date="Tue, Jul 10, 2007 at 09:18:42AM -0700">
> I agree with the concept of regional/city style chapters in the US.
> 
> In Europe, per-country tends to make sense for the following reasons:
> 
> 1. Countries in Europe are often (though not always, obviously) drawn  
> in a way that also matches language borders, and languages are a  
> sensible way to break down the Wikimedia community
> 
> 2. Countries in Europe, despite the ongoing efforts at "common  
> market", are still significantly more different from each other on  
> legal grounds than US states.
> 
> --------
> 
> Perhaps someday, some national chapters in Europe might want to have  
> "subchapters" in some sense, for example if Milan and Rome had groups  
> meeting regularly and trying to schedule local events separately.   
> But that can be for local chapters to decide later on.

I agree. But there's no reason that one needs to approach the formation
of chapters or subchapters in such a strictly hierarchical fashion. One
would be well served to set a reasonable list of expectations for
chapters -- something that seems to be already done -- and to support
groups that thrive and excite people and do good work regardless of
whether they are national or state based or happen to straddle a border.

In Ubuntu, we have a wide variety of "Local Community Teams" (LoCos)
which are similar to chapters.  One of most active teams early on was
the Detroit Team which held events and predated a national or regional
team. Other big teams were the Brazil and Italian teams. Different
scopes ended being more inspiring and appropriate in different places. A
few groups merged. A few groups stayed distinct but collaborated from
time to time. A few groups split. A few with overlapping scopes happened
too. 

The important thing is that the communities are responsible, empowered,
active, and doing good work to support the project and the mission. It
shouldn't matter whether the resulting structure plots cleanly onto a
map, a set of existing borders, or an organizational hierarchy.

Regards,
Mako

-- 
Benjamin Mako Hill
mako at atdot.cc
http://mako.cc/

Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so
far as society is free to use the results. --RMS
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