Question: should we recommend establishment of a Chapters Network
As a matter of fact, I have. The points raised in that proposal are important (especially the "delegation" part, which allows for timely decisions), but the issue remains the same. If it's only chapters, we're de facto reinforcing the idea that chapters need to get organized in order to talk to the Foundation. My view is chapters and Foundation need to get organized together, in order to talk to one another (and this means organisation to organisation). It could be called the "International Wikimedia Council", or something like that, it's not so important. What's important, I find, is not to restrict it to one kind of organisation.
Sorry, I think I misunderstand your comment, Delphine. As long as you're OK with keeping the "delegation" part (which I also think is the most important element), I'd be very happy to have some expansions of this organizational idea.
To me, the important part is delegation as in Each chapter will designate a single person (either the chapter's lead officer or another person so designated by the chapter), who will represent the chapter in issues that come before the body.. But it would be even better if that said: Each Wikimedia organisation will designate a single person (either the organisation's lead officer or another person so designated by the organisation), who will represent the organisation in issues that come before the body..
In short, the idea of a "Council/Network/Thing (as De Gaulle put it ;)) is something I totally agree with, just it should be very clear that this "Council" involves all Wikimedia organisations, not just chapters. The phrasing "organisations" is maybe a bit lame, since well, there's only chapters and foundation at this stage, but it has the merit of making clear that we're not having the chapters on one side, the foundation on the other. Mind you, I'm pretty sure we agree on the bottom line and we're just stumbling on words and their interpretation :)
I guess different situations will call for different sets of organizations needing to be represented. Some situations will call for chapters only, some will call for chapters in combination with WMF, some will call for only a subset of chapters, etc.
My original suggestion was meant to take care of the simplest case; the set of chapter organizations deciding "chapter issues", because it should be relatively easy in this situation to agree that each chapter has one vote, and that each chapter will be counted equally. So, I hope that for issues of this sort, we can have some kind of de facto chapters network working.
I suppose that for issues that call for a combination of the chapters and the WMF, some more complicated form of organization will be needed, because we presumably wouldn't treat the WMF as simply equivalent to one of the chapters. I'm unsure how that situation should be balanced exactly, but I do think it will require some additional complexity that wouldn't be necessary when dealing with pure "chapters issues".
I just want to make sure that we are able to deal with the simple case first, ie "chapters issues", while also leaving room for finding a balance with WMF+chapters and other combinations.
The question here would be, what are "chapters issues"? To me, there are only "chapters issues" because we keep on thinking chapters vs foundation (or chapters // (parallel) foundation if you want to be less "confrontational"). My take is to say, there are only "organisational issues" and those should be tackled with all Wikimedia Organisations, not by the chapters in their own little corner, nor by the foundation on its own. As for the question of "one chapter one vote", it is probably a whole strategic process into itself ;). You're thinking representation. If there is representation, then this "representative" body must have some kind of final usage/power/strength, whatever you want to call it. A chapters network to makde decision that noone is going to apply is probably useless. Hence the call for making sure that all parties with a stake in those decisions be represented and that decisions made in turn apply to all organisations represented.