> What harm is avoided by eliminating the ambiguity you refer to, Pine? One of the harms is that aspiring chapters don't know what standards we should be aiming to meet, because the standards are vague. Another harm is that the Affiliations Committee doesn't have clear criteria to apply, which means that decisions are likely to be more subjective and inconsistent than the decisions would be if there was a more specific set of criteria.
As I mentioned in my previous email, I feel that it's okay to have some flexibility in the requirements, such as by saying "a chapter must meet four of the following six criteria" or "this particular requirement may be met in one or more of the following ways". But those flexible criteria should be clearly defined. > How is that damage ameliorated by, as you suggest, re-classifying > a chapter as a user group? I feel that this is a separate issue. There should be no privilege attached to already being a chapter. It is unfair to apply one set of criteria to existing chapters, and a much tighter set of criteria to aspiring chapters. Chapter status should be linked with a substantial level of current or recent activity in Wikimedia. Chapter activity levels may decrease for many reasons, some of which are beyond their control, such as if a fire breaks out in their office, or if an especially strong community organizer leaves the country. If such things happen and the activity level or membership level of the organization decrease, it is reasonable (if not desirable) to have the organization, which now would resemble a user group rather than a chapter, actually be categorized as a user group until the organization recovers. I would call this "truth in advertising". It's not comfortable, but it is the reality, and it would give the group a strong incentive to re-energize itself and return its levels of membership and activity to the levels that it once had, rather than allowing it to keep the privileges of chapter status with few of the responsibilities and expectations. Pine _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
