As you may gather, I have no money I can contribute and even a small membership fee is a bit of a hardship in my current circumstance, but - given a good charter and good projects - I may well be able to recruit donations from non-Wikipedians familiar with my work, or otherwise interested/supportive.....
for context, and not meaning to whine, only a a staatement of fact, through much of my last few busy years editing, I have been near-homeless, at times homeless, and/or living in substandard accommodations and otherwise just getting by....this is disability-related and from related disemployment; the devil finds work for idle hands, and my hands have not been idle, as some of you know well. i'm pretty much full-time for long bouts of time, to the degree that I don't get out and look for work (which is of limited options to me anyway) partly BECAUSE I've enmired myself in Wikipedia....such is wiki-addiction; but wikipedia has also been a way to keep my mind from going to seed, although of course it can still go 'round in cirlces ;-)
I"m also interested in seeing more advancement of the OTHER wiki-arenas, not just Wikipedia; I've mentioned WikiTravel already, WikiNews also could use a good Canadian contingent but is seriously staff-limited; making it easier and quicker and more accessible to non-wikipedians could result in a new, independent, news service in Canada, which is much-needed; but right now they only have, as i recall, eight article reviewers, meaning taht the time between someone submits something and when it passes review to get published it's rarely any longer "news".....I'd also be curious about what marketing/packaging efforts there are for the saleable aspects of WikiMedia technologies, e.g. private wikis, corporate wikis, assocation wikis, and what those licensing/costs issues are....
MC
On Sat, Jan 8, 2011 at 12:52 PM, Gerald A geraldablists@gmail.com wrote:
On Sat, Jan 8, 2011 at 3:39 PM, P Lahiry plahiry@gmail.com wrote:
As reluctant as I am to use the "money talks" adage, a decent membership fee will ensure that the member is somewhat vested in the organization.
"Money talks" in a non-profit ... anyone else hear the ring of irony in that?
The downside to this is that students get screwed over. Maybe we could
setup a two-tiered system - regular voting members and non-voting student "observers".
There was some proposals with respect to two-tiered systems before. I think this adds un-needed complexity and divides the community.
Much better would be crystal clear goals and objectives that WM Canada will be working towards, and a nominal fee to be able to vote for the "board".
It's better to solicit for a worthy cause, like the WMF does, in my opinion. Small fee for membership, but donate what you can to see {some noble goal} achieved.
Thanks, Gerald
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