[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Kosovo Chapter? Re: Fwd: SFK100 Press Release

Mon Sep 27 19:48:03 UTC 2010

On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 9:36 PM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 19:13, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > If the Kosovans are willing to wait, it would be make our lives much
> > easier if we wait until the international community makes up their
> > minds, but that could take a while (it's been 2.5 years already).
>
> I started to analyze the situation, but I've realized that the
> conclusion is the same as Tomas' one, while worded from another angle:
> there is no definite conclusion and presently all of them include
> possibilities for making harm to one of the sides, including WMF.
>
> The most important harm which exists now is the fact that free
> knowledge activists from Kosovo are not included yet into the
> Wikimedia movement. So, until the situation becomes more clear, we
> should think how to solve that problem.
>
> And we have tools to do that. Let's call them to internal-l (for
> example, to ask FLOSSK, as any WM chapter to delegate five members to
> the internal-l and chapters-l), let's treat their events as friendly
> ones (I was in Pristina, Gerard and Siebrand have already been at
> their event in Albania -- yes, free software and free knowledge
> activists from Kosovo

> are responsible for organizing those events in
> Albania -- but without WMF's official support), let's give to a couple
> of them scholarships for the next Wikimanias, etc.
>
> Alot of the work and cost of organizing Albania fell upon me personally,
and I am from USA helping with kosovo and albania.
It would be great to get some financial help for albania, and we can also
finance the effort via wikimedia albania, what do you think?

> BTW, political connotation in such cases could be avoided if WMF is
> extensively recognizing sub-national chapters. However, it is not the
> case. The product is that just well organized Catalan group is able to
> follow current trends inside of the Wikimedia movement. I can imagine
> how many obstacles have many other Wikimedian groups all over the
> world. And we need to find a temporary solution for such cases.
>
> Unlike in the case of Kosovo, which has some chances to become a UN
> member in the future, probably hundreds of other groups would have to
> be permanently content with the "temporary solution". In some of the
> cases even willingness of ChapCom to recognize sub-national or
> cross-national chapters won't help.
>
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-- 
James Michael DuPont
Member of Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova and Albania flossk.org
flossal.org