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:

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