On 11 Feb 2014, at 20:18, Samuel Klein meta.sj@gmail.com wrote:
Hello Frédéric, a quick comment:
On Tue, Feb 11, 2014 at 4:44 AM, Frédéric Schütz schutz@mathgen.ch wrote:
Your decision is not "you should have a good track record", it is "you should have a good track record AND NOT have bylaws".
Bylaws are fine, whatever makes sense for each group; just not mandatory. The Board is looking for two years of active work when recognizing entities.
The WMF also wants to let all groups have easier access to trademarks and funds. This is what user groups were designed to allow, with minimal overhead. These two ideas were combined into "be a user group for two years".
The board meeting minutes specifically say "unincorporated Wikimedia user group”, though, which makes it sound like you don’t want groups to, well, incorporate. Which means people involved in those user groups take on personal liability for their activities rather than having the protection of a formal organisation, which is really bad for the volunteers should anything go badly...
Thanks, Mike