Hi Adam
The WMF has never been a membership based organization.
Actually, what happened (roughly) is this.
1) WMF is created in 2003. Legal obligation is to have at least 3 board
members. Jimmy create it and ask two people working with him at that
time to join the board. Those were Michael Davis and Tim Shell.
Fairly standard situation, that I have seen over and over, upon creation
of similar organizations. So at this point, all 3 board members are
appointed.
Jimmy indicates that he thinks community members should have space on
the board and that he will make sure something is done before one year
to get two additional people on board. Jimmy transfers any already
existing asset to WMF (that was basically a couple of servers, a couple
of domain names...).
Keep in mind that at this point... the Foundation is basically nothing
except an administrative entity. And an entity to which people can send
money to get new servers instead of sending money to Jimmy. But there is
nothing else. And certainly no complicated procedures, no mission
statement, no office, no staff. Just a paper, a couple servers and
quickly a bank account I suppose :)
Bylaws ? IF there were bylaws, these were quick copy and paste of
generic bylaws for the purpose of having bylaws. I am not even sure
there were some back then when it was *created*... I suppose there was
something...
Honestly... that was NO ONE concern back in 2003. Our concern is that
Wikipedia was Lohipedia. To be very specific... there were times where
from France I could only access Wikipedia in the morning. As soon as
America woke up, there was so much lag that Wikipedia was simply not
accessible. Our concern was tech. And tech meant "who owns the servers"
and "how do we buy servers" etc.
2) In the following year, Jimbo set up first real bylaws with Alex.
Those were not specifically discussed with community from memory. I
think what happened is that Alex told Jimbo we needed bylaws. Jimbo said
yes. Alex drafted something. And done.
Did they get through lengthy discussions and many lenses for proofing ?
Not. Again... it was sincerely not the biggest concern then.
And yes... these bylaws were VERY complicated with regards to
membership. There were Contributing Members, Volunteer Active, Honorary etc.
Why such a complexity ? Absolutely not in the perspective of board
elections. It was made this way because at that time, it was perceived
the way we would fund Wikipedia would be by membership fees.
We were looking for a model to fund us. First "inputs" were from Jimbo,
his company and a few wealthy community members. But this was not
sustainable. Original discussions included putting ads on the website
(which led to the Spanish fork), selling tee-shirts, or getting fees
from members...
3) A year after the creation, as promised, Jimbo made it so that a first
vote be held to elect the first two trustees from the community (Angela
and I). Tim and Richard stayed there, so practically we have 3
self-appointed and 2 elected. That was in 2004.
4) At the first board meeting in summer 2004, Angela, Jimbo and I
discussed finances.
To put things in perspective, the WMF was still pretty much a piece of
paper, with a few servers, a bank account and a bunch of domain names.
And bylaws of some sorts...
Wikimedia DE was already created and Wikimedia FR was just starting, so
we had a couple of chapters already.
So logical thing to do at a board meeting... discussing those membership
fees described in the bylaws and tossing figures.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Membership_fees
This page is interesting on this matter.
At this point, who cares about "electing board members" and how members
would elect or appoint board members ? We just had an election. All
good. What matters really is "how do we collect this cash we need to
operate Wikipedia".
5) Over the following few months, we discuss this membership concept and
basically conclude that it is simply not implementable. The discussion
is not only "amongst board members", but largely on the mailing lists
and meta. The membership structure is too complicated. How do we ensure
privacy (most participants are anonymous) with membership and fees
(which is impossible if members are anonymous). How do we manage fees in
a world where 60 dollars is nothing for one but a hell of a cost for
another ? Do we give more decision weight to those giving more ? How do
we manage many members given that we have... no staff ?
Do we seek professional opinion on this ? Yes and no. We have no cash to
pay expert feedback.
So is that "membership" thing implemented ? No. Never.
6) It is only when Brad Patrick joins in probono that the conversation
about bylaws and membership came turn into something more practical.
Brad proposes to rewrite bylaws and we accept this help wholeheartedly.
By then... we are in 2005-2006 and beginning to figure out that we could
manage without putting ads, without selling tee-shirts, without setting
up that very complicated membership system... by simply asking for
donations.
And the membership model, meant to fund Wikipedia, never implemented,
goes down the drain.
Were those changes legal or not legal ? Well... I do not really see how
it could be illegal actually... Given that membership has never been
implemented... in effect... either the WMF had no members... or the only
members were the board members.
Florence
PS: all of our story is colorful, not only the so-called membership :)
Le 26/01/16 19:39, Adam Wight a écrit :
Dear friends,
Recent events have made me curious to learn more about the Wikimedia
Foundation's origins and history as a membership organization. The
revelations about the Wikimedia Foundation Board elections being a
recommendation for appointment rather than a direct vote seem to have been
a surprise to many of us, and almost ten years after membership was
eliminated, we see strongly suggestive "directly elected" language still
being fixed on the Foundation's own Board elections page.[1]
It turns out that this history is colorful, the Foundation was a membership
organization from 2003-2006 and Board seats were indeed, originally,
intended to be directly elected by member-Wikimedians. It seems that the
membership issue was never quite resolved. I've put some of my notes on
metawiki, please forward to any wiki historians who might be interested in
throwing their weight on a shovel.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_membership_controversy
As a current WMF staff member, and having received a formal scolding two
weeks ago for expressing my professional and personal opinions on this
list--that a hierarchical corporate structure is completely inappropriate
and ineffectual for running the Foundation--I don't feel safe
editorializing about what membership could mean for the future of the
Wikimedia movement. But I would be thrilled to see this discussion take
place, and to contribute however I am able.
A note to fellow staff: Anything you can say about this history is most
likely protected speech under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, since we're asking
whether state and federal laws were violated.
In solidarity,
Adam Wight
[[mw:User:Adamw]]
[1]
https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=Board_of_Trustees&dif…
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