Chapters meeting 2010/Documentation/New chapters
New chapters 4:00 PM, introduction: Delphine Ménard
Problems new chapters have at the moment, possibilities and solutions
Introduction:
- Chapters commitee started in 2006
- Primary thing: Help chapters to become chapters
- Worked on a process, step by step (find the steps on meta)
- Take care of cultural differences
- Input needed: Try to accompany the new chapters in their development
- Share best practices with them
- Cultural differences are very important
Which good and bad things happened in the process of building the chapter?
Josh, Philippines
- main problem: documents got lost, language problems
- No help by Indonesia because documents are very different, were not able to get any help from another chapter.
- Other chapters don't exist in the same region, only local organizations.
Portugals
- organization, fill in some documents, was very smooth
- Wasn't involved in the ChapCom-Part
India
- Wouldn't blame ChapCom
- Process has not been not successful yet
- Difficult: Each region speaks different languages (over 20 languages all in all)
- Meet-ups are very difficult
- ChapCom has been helpful, there was a long discussion
How did the discussion of building a chapter take place?
Philippines (James Josh Lim):
- Took place in English Wikipedia and on his user page – now via eMail
Portugal (Susana Morais):
- Started in pt.wp
- long process; then e-mail, meetings
- after that: list to join the "chapter“, still by e-mail and wikipage as well
- in the beginning public, after that mails with interested persons.
India (Arun Ramarathman):
- Started on IRC, after that meta, after that e-mail
Lodevijk: Problematic: Closed doors...
Philippines: Everyone should be involved, even outside the project. India: Huge community: No consensus is possible, it is impossible to have discussion with that many people
Which possibilities are used to involve the community?
- mailing lists (cede for privacy)
- wikis (wp/meta) => Participation
- IRL meetings => face to face
- Nothing better than meeting in person
- personal emails
- involve more and more people
- chat / messages / IRC
- telepone-call
What was the starting-process of the chapter like?
Russia (Victor): Opened a wiki-discusssion, after that OTRS (closed) with access to trustees Process of making the chapter happened onwiki, moved to meta.
Norway (John): "By accident“: Before the starting, there were wiki-meetups, discussions – journalists: Shouldn't we start a chapter; one other meeting: Formed a chapter (surprise!) Academy: Begun working, function; hasn't hired anyone, more professionalization
Sweden (Lars): What we need is conference-organizing-persons, different skills, not Wikipedians: this could be were new chapters can find an approach: Maybe it's not Wikipedians who should start a new chapter. It's obvious: Wikipeidans start building a chapter. This needn't be obvious in the future.
Netherlands (Lodewijk): Is there anyway to make creating a chapter more easy?
Help from existing wikimedia-organizations
India: Fundamental documents → nearby chapters can help. Someone has to start somewhere, in some region, and then other regions can help them. Existing chapters can help new chapters (cf. Germany, Sweden, Denmark)
- cultural similarities (legal)
- local peculiarities
Bylaw-problem: First thing you have to look at is the law in your country, not what other Wikimedia-organizations did.
Italy: 70 % were the same as Germany Brazil: Uses the bylaws of Argentina
There can be a template (about 20 % by foundation) but the rest has to be found out
How dificult can it be to become a chapter?
- Why did you choose to become a chapter, should it be difficult, or not?
- How do we make sure that we involve that much people as possible.
- Balance betwen control & accessibility
Process can fail. We should try not to fail again, why does it fail?
- Ties with WM community
- The group did not join
Community-assessment
- information → drop it in communities
- voting in community
- flags in projects-edit count
- a group of relevant members went to meta and expressed their concernes
- faster different profiles (other)
- involve community in building the bylaw-writing
Find ways to community-assessment
- trolls can be a very important problem
- balanced as possible
Political assessment: What about Taiwan? Kosovo etc. Cultural/linguistic chareers, regionals chapter, transnational chapters
Answers: Sub chapters of national chaptes (would be interesting for India) → maybe start with such a subchapter? Indian: Because of work on the national level it's necessary to keep national chatpers Lodevijk: When we don't have any representation, why creating a chapter? (e. g. Belgium, there is no consensus, isn't it better not to build a chapter or only subchapters?) Richard: not the geographical thing, but the goal behind the geographical thing Functionality → is a subchapter actually functional? No conflict
Summary:
[edit]- Functional: That's very important, it shouldn't be in conflict with other wikimedia-projects
- Balance in assessment of the community
- Communication tools, find the balance in private and public discussion