[okfn-be] Collaboration with Wikipedia

Fri Feb 3 02:55:31 UTC 2012

Hello Wouter,

A chapter is an organization with as goal to support the Wikimedia projects and to support other goals that support the sharing of knowledge. I think a chapter should be formed basically by the users who are active on one or more of the Wikimedia projects. However this does not exclude other people to participate in a chapter.

In September 2011 and the months after, some users who organized Wiki Loves Monuments for Belgium & Luxembourg, spoke about setting up a chapter in Belgium. Our goal is to do that in 2012. After some months rest, we are now slowly starting the process to get a chapter organized in Belgium. If anyone is interested, we certainly would welcome them.

I personally think that Wikimedia Belgium can have partnerships with other organizations.

As Wikipedia and with Wikipedia Wikimedia, has a name and a good background, to be able to use the logo and have officially the name Wikimedia Belgium, we must be registered with the Wikimedia Foundation. The name can open doors and can give a good handle for other organizations to talk and work with.

Greetings - Romaine

--- On Sun, 1/8/12, Lodewijk <lodewijk at effeietsanders.org> wrote:

From: Lodewijk <lodewijk at effeietsanders.org>
Subject: Re: [okfn-be] Collaboration with Wikipedia
To: "Gmail - Wouter" <wouter.vanden.hove at gmail.com>
Cc: okfn-be at lists.okfn.org, "maarten deneckere" <maartendeneckere at gmail.com>, "romaine_wiki" <Romaine_wiki at yahoo.com>, "Kris De Gussem" <kris.degussem at gmail.com>
Date: Sunday, January 8, 2012, 9:36 PM

Hi Wouter,
Good to see that conversation is ongoing. Let me first shortly introduce myself: I'm Lodewijk Gelauff, Dutch, co-founder and  former (5y) board member of Wikimedia Netherlands and member of the Wikimedia Foundation chapters committee. 

There are some countries indeed where Wikimedia chapters and others have joined together in one organization. Being a CC branch organization is however entirely different than being a Wikimedia chapter, so I guess that cannot be really compared. While CC is primarily about getting good licenses, and laying infrastructure, Wikimedia is more about a specific community with their goals. Cooperation however seems to work well in many countries. The Wikimedia Chapters in Indonesia and Serbia are also the CC-local organization, but that is mainly secondary. Wikibilim in Kazakhstan is not yet recognized as a Wikimedia chapter - currently still under review of the chapters committee. 

Having a joint organization as some kind of breeding chamber might or may not work. It depends a lot on how it is being structured, and how well everything is organized. It would certainly make some things also more complicated. If you would choose that route, I would definitely suggest to submit that first to the chapters committee and/or the WMF legal department, because it might make trademark agreement etc more tricky. Also there has to be enough 'love' between the local groups to join in one organization. In Italy the OSM people tried to make WMIT also an OSM-chapter, but as far as I know that never really worked out. 

From the side of Wikimedia there is unlikely a *veto* against a joint organization, but it might be that they are somewhat sceptical and will not recognize you as a chapter, but as an 'associated organization' or something. Which would still allow a lot, but also more flexibility with regards to trademark agreements etc. 

I'd be happy to brainstorm some day, preferrably via online means, but I think it is much more important to get some belgians involved rather than a Dutchie like me :) 
Best,

Lodewijk
No dia 8 de Janeiro de 2012 22:24, Gmail - Wouter <wouter.vanden.hove at gmail.com> escreveu:

Op 08-01-12 20:59, maarten deneckere schreef:

Wouter,

seems we're on the same wavelength about this new organisation. However, this means the okfn organisation (vzw/asbl?) will be mostly a administrative organisation, that will have to control the different smaller organisations. 

OKFN-BE will be an official organisation (Belgian VZW/asbl)

+ will hopefully by very active on concrete projects.

The current momentum is the biggest for all things related to "open data".

So in practice, most focus will be on this topic, but this is just because most people

currently subscribed on this list are ""open data"-evangelists.

But people active in Open Access, Wikipedia, are just as welcome, and can work in parallel.

If enough people  in OKFN-BE are active in Wikimedia-projects, they can decide to form a new organisation like Wikimedia BE  (or Wikimedia Flanders, ...). If that is the case, that will be an independent organisation, or it could just stay a working group within OKFN-BE.

This is what the wikimedia-people should discuss among themselves.

It also depends on the requirements of the parent organisation to become their local chapter (like keeping the organisation's name/logo)

For example,  in Kazachstan (now how did I get that example?)

the same organisation is both Creative Commons Partner and the Wikimedia chapter:

http://wikibilim.kz/

http://wikibilim.kz/view-content/19/.html

http://wikibilim.kz/view-content/2/-.html

So it seems possible that a single organisation acts as a local chapter for different parent organisations.

In the end it all depends on the number of people willing to take up any responsibility.

Greets

Wouter