> The consultation can be completely informal and not official advise,
> of course. Surely German lawyers aren't forbidden from chatting with
> me about such things.
>
> Was my message posted on the website so that lots of people will have
> the opportunity to respond?
Yes, its in the red frame now...
--Ivo Köthnig
The German Wikipedia community is working on setting up an
"eingetragener Verein" (I found these translations on dict.leo.org:
"incorporated society", "membership corporation", "registered
association", don't know which one fits best). Presumably the foundation
meeting will take place in february, we will apply for tax exempt status
soon afterwards.
Our goals are
1. to be able to collect donations (tax-free)
2. to communicate with organisations from outside the project in a more
professional, official way (e.g. with universities or foundations)
There has also been a bit of talk about using the association as an
democratic institution for decision making, but nothing has been decided
yet. I'd say we should only use the association for this in case of
emergency or when all other attempts fail.
For more information you can feed Babelfish with these URLs:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vereinhttp://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verein/Satzung
Jimbo, is this okay for you? Do you have any wishes or worries?
The association will support all Wikimedia projects, not just Wikipedia.
We will support the whole international project, and transfer part of
the donations to the foundation if this is legaly possible, but focus on
the German-speaking projects. Of course we're not planning a fork, and
of course there is no cabal, at least not a German one.
Kurt
UPS tracking numbers say that the new servers will be delivered on
Friday. I'm trying to clear my schedule for that entire weekend to do
everything in my power to get them installed and running for next
Monday.
Obviously, Brion is in a much better position than I am to say what
will be needed before we can switch. But I think it'll be pretty easy
to get us more or less switched, although full use of our new
equipment (with the squids and whatnot) will of course take a bit
longer.
--Jimbo
The following people should get admin/sysop status on the german Wikipedia,
please:
Akl, Chd, Wst, Fab, Robodoc, Magnus, Echoray, Aglarech, Maclemo, Baldhur
(Voting and discussion may be found on
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Diskussion:Administratoren). I'm just
listing the "very clear" candidates here, we will see how far we get with the
others soon. Can a developer enable the admin flag for those people please
and then leave me a short notice, so I can inform them in turn.
Thanks
Uli
Ulrich Fuchs wrote:
>Wikimedia, on the other hand, would be the organization that actually *is the
>project* (not the service). That organization needs to be
>* democratically organized
>* global
>* bound now and for all future to the common goal of creating free content
>without paying authors or officials; however we must consider that there
>might be a need in the future to have employees, if the project get's Big
>with a capital B.
>* allowing a country substructure for better fundraising and representation
>* allowing a project substructure for setting project policies and
>representation (these are two different things, it might be a necessary to
>speak for the *german language Wikipedia* at one time and for the *german
>Wikimedians" at another time
>* organized in a way that these local chapters and subproject chapters form
>the organization bottom up and not top down.
>
>
Currently, Wikimedia (the umbrella for the Wikipedia and other projects)
is organized based on consensus, if you ignore the largely unused
dictatorial powers. Consensus is not the same thing as democracy.
Wikimedia is already global. The various substructures are not fully
developed yet, but they will be. We barely have the scaffolding of the
superstructure itself at this point, with a not-fully-constituted Board.
The rest will take a little time - consensus always takes time.
Wikimedia is bound to free content by the GFDL. The freedom is more
important than the principle of democracy (which will be generally
respected through the consensus process anyway, since so many of us
believe in democratic government in some fashion).
I'm not sure if paying skilled authors for content is fundamentally
objectionable, but the model suggests that it's unnecessary anyway.
Other employees, including officials, might need to be paid for their
services. The "Service Provider" would also be an employee in this sense.
I do agree that we need to consider how to ensure effective
representation of different languages in the Wikimedia organization.
Certainly the Board should not always consist only of English-speakers.
Because of this issue, it seems that Wikimedia may eventually need to
pay for some translation services. For now, perhaps bilingual members
could bridge the gap.
--Michael Snow
I think, before we go into any detail on chapters, influence of locals, set
and elected trustees and so on we should spend a little more time and think
of what is actually needed if we talk about a global structure pushing the
wikipedia/wikimedia idea forward. The following are a few thoughts, open for
comment. I am using "Wikimedia" here in this posting not as a name for the
current foundation, but for the big-picture-project, that we all feel part of
and that was founded as "Wikipedia" by Jimmy and later extendend to cover all
sort of wikibased content ("Wikimedia").
We will all agree that there needs to be one organization that runs servers
and acts as a service provider, because otherwise there would be no Wiki.
That organization obviously needs to have the final decision making on what
is on the servers, because the people running that service will be
responsible for the content. However, we don't want to have that control
extended in a way that the people running the server are able to enforce
general guidelines and rules on the Wikimedia project and it's subprojects as
such. Much of the current headaches some people have with the current bylaws
arise from that intermingling of service and project.
The best way to deal with that issue would be two seperate the corporation
running the wiki service from the corporation being "Wikimedia". Wikimedia
would just buy in (or get donated, we don't need to discuss that in detail
already at this point) the *service* to run the wiki from that other
corporation (I call that one "Service Provider" for now). This way, the
service provider has full control of the user accounts, can block users if
the put copyright violating content on the servers and so on. But if the
service provider blocks users for reasons, that are not understood by
Wikimedia, Wikimedia can just go ahead and find another service provider.
Wikimedia, on the other hand, would be the organization that actually *is the
project* (not the service). That organization needs to be
* democratically organized
* global
* bound now and for all future to the common goal of creating free content
without paying authors or officials; however we must consider that there
might be a need in the future to have employees, if the project get's Big
with a capital B.
* allowing a country substructure for better fundraising and representation
* allowing a project substructure for setting project policies and
representation (these are two different things, it might be a necessary to
speak for the *german language Wikipedia* at one time and for the *german
Wikimedians" at another time
* organized in a way that these local chapters and subproject chapters form
the organization bottom up and not top down.
Lars Aronssen mentioned on the german list the "Medizins sans frontiere" (is
ist "medicines without frontieres" in english?). As far as I can see, they
are a network of local organizations, there is no superstructure, however,
they operate together without breaking up since 1971 and even got the peace
nobel price. I think organizing that way would be a very good thing.
What they have is a common, but very short "charta" that fixes four major
points one and forever. That charta is declared as part of the local and
project organization bylaws, but - apart from that - those organizations are
legally independant.
However, I do not think that we can do completely without some sort of
superstructure. That superstructure is probably needed to sign contracts with
the service provider mentioned above (it could also be done by the local
chapter of the country the service provider resides in), to draw up general
rules and to change the charta in case of need (consider a drastical
technological or copyright law change in 20 years from now that would have a
dramatic impact). Such a change of the charta would have to be adopted by the
local and project chapters. But it's very likeley that they will adapt it,
since they had influence on the revision. Third, those superstructure would
have the rights on the Wikipedia/Wikimedia names.
To avoid a "democratic takeover" of that superstructure by a single interest
group, and to avoid language barriers for members, this should have no
individual persons as members - only project and local suborganizations (It
will be a hard thing to tune the voting influence, but I think it's
feasable). Those local and project organizations would have to send
representatives, if a physical meeting is needed for some reason.
Probably I should draw a nice ASCII art image somewhere, but I think you got
the picture: If we start to think really global now, we must go in the
direction outlined above and seperate the "to-do's" that are needed to keep
our idea working into seperate organizations. Organizations that act
together, but still control each other in a way that no single person with
superpowers is needed to keep the Wikimedia idea alive.
Uli
We are now setup with http://www.moneybookers.com , a service similar
to Ebay that I am told may be easier to use for Europeans.
I have tested every aspect of this, except for actually withdrawing
money. The account is just a little shy of the minimum amount
required for a withdrawal. If some advocate of moneybookers wants to
help out, a small (5 EUR, roughly) donation would put enough into the
account for me to finalize testing the withdrawal mechanism.
I see no reason why it should not work, though.
I also investgiated e-Gold and decided not to pursue it at this time.
Too many payment options will be confusing, and I saw no actual
advantages too the e-Gold system. Several aspects of their website
returned server errors for me, and this did not instill confidence in
them. The whole thing seemed rather questionable.
But, I would be willing to take another look a few months from now,
if there's really strong demand for that.
--Jimbo
Section 4.2. WRITTEN RESIGNATION. Any member may resign from the
Foundation by submitting a written resignation to the Secretary. Such
resignation shall be effective as of the date received by the
Foundation, unless said resignation specifies another date. The Board at
it’s sole discretion may maintain or remove any such user’s account from
any of its projects upon such resignation.
Wait a minute there...Why should resignation from the wikimedia
foundation have ANY sort of relation with the fact of being allowed to
contribute to Wikipedia ?
Are we writting here that the board may have the right to erase a user
account from Wikipedia, just upon the argument that the user in question
decided to resign from the foundation ?
Are we saying that the board of the foundation is having any power as to
decide who is allowed or not allowed to have an account ?
F. HONORARY MEMBERSHIP: An Honorary membership may be bestowed upon
any person or organization who has made a significant contribution to
the Foundation upon a recommendation by the Board of Directors and
approval by the general membership at the General Meeting of the
Foundation. Honorary members shall not be required to pay dues and shall
not be eligible to hold office or vote.
What do we define as approval by the general membership ?
These bylaws may be altered, amended or repealed and new Bylaws may be
adopted by a majority of the entire Board of Trustees at any regular
meeting or special meeting, provided that at least ten days written
notice is given of intention to alter, amend or repeal or to adopt new
Bylaws at such meeting.
Do I understand well when reading that all powers are in the hands of
the board only, that only board has the power to empeach one of the
board member if necessary, that the board will then replace the missing
member, and that only board decide of any bylaws modifications ?