Brianna Laugher wrote:
On 12/01/2008, Robert Rohde rarohde@gmail.com wrote:
Membership associations (and things like company stockholders) generally
have powers to force issues like these, but as you may remember the WMF has no membership. I could be wrong, but I don't believe there is any formal process currently existing for the wiki communities to force the WMF to consider or act on anything. Which pretty much just leaves whining about things.
That's not to say that the WMF couldn't adopt such a process.
Right, this is my line of reasoning too. However, you can't say something will happen when X% of the member/community do something unless you know how big the membership/community is. And you don't know how big the membership/community is until you define what it is to be a member (of the comunity) or the membership requirements. These are still unresolved problems.
Some ideas.
Please Brianna...
Do us the favor to not imagine we have NEVER given any thoughts to the matter. I remember spending hours on this in the past. See all the pages here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Membership
And explanations for change of bylaws http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-December/025543.html
Ant
- Memberhip by paying membership fees. If this happens I think it
should come with legal power, ie membership of WMF. So it would mean changing the bylaws. However I think there would be majoy concerns about equity, in terms of is the fee reasonable in XYZ countries and does Paypal even accept those countries' currencies. [I recently looked at the membership of a couple of "digital rights" type charities and while non-US citizens can join they really do seem to be mainly concerned with Americans. I think WMF could not reasonably adopt such a stance, so this is a problem.]
- Membership by wiki requirement (single project 200 edits, > 6
months, not banned) + self-appointment, ie put your name on a list somewhere.Can only sign up for membership for six months at a time, due to the natural easy-come-easy-go nature of the community. This limits "dead wood" membership, ie people who signed up ages ago but in reality are no longer present.
Effeietsanders said "I think we should not be so "arrogant" to compare ourselves with a whole country ;-)" I don't think it is arrogance but we need to recognise the limitations of that comparison. National citizenship generally doesn't have a participation-in-society requirement. If I leave Australia and live in every country of the world for a year each, I will still be an Australian citizen even if I hate Australia, have no idea who the government is or even where it is on the map. It's not trivial to pick up citizenship of another country, generally.
However, it is really easy to become a member of the Wikimedia community. Just pick a project you like and do peaceful work for a few months. There are no money or legal requirements. Time is the only thing every person on the planet is given equally, 24 hours every day. :) So community membership is generally thought of as being related to activity, I think. I don't think people want a definition where once you've done enough editing, BOOM - you're a member for life. No, you're a member as long as keep having some appropriate level of activity. Easy come, easy go.
cheers Brianna