[Foundation-l] WMF Chapter Development Director job posting

Mon Aug 23 10:55:07 UTC 2010

I do agree with some of what Mr. Meijssen said in the last email but not all
of it. Yes, there might be a bias with some of the new projects being
undertaken in the US specifically, but outside of Europe there are very few
chapters who would be in a position to take on university collaborated
projects without some sort of experience and help from the foundation.

The Idea that it is expensive to undertake projects in the US compared to
the rest of the world in illusory, the costs incurred in lets say the UK or
Germany might be higher than the US, simply because of the foundation is
located across the Atlantic, their would be much higher travel cost and more
paperwork involved when dealing with large institutions, not to mention a
language barrier which might be prohibitive in the rest of the EU.

With that said I do agree with Mr. Meijssen that the foundation might mix
national and international priorities at some occasions. A wider
representation using one of the EU chapters could easily be achieved
especially in the case of the recent university projects.

Regards

Salmaan

On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com
> wrote:

> 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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