Anthere wrote:
It seems that amongst the most important and urgent
issues we have to
fix, are.... the bylaws.
Yes the by-laws are important, but fully understanding the underlying
ideas is more important than the actual wording of the by-laws.
And after thinking deeply about it, I have decided
that
* I would like the feedback of the legal-able on the current version.
* I would like the feedback of the community on the whole "membership"
issue.
I'm not sure what you mean by the term "legal-able", so I won't
comment
on that at this time.
I don't think that having no members is much help. Then turning around
and having trustees elected by the Community when the term "Community"
is not even defined only makes matters worse. If you have members who
are real people they have implicit rights in that capacity, such as the
right to inspect certain records of the Foundation. What, if any,
rights can be attributed to an undefined community? If by "Community"
we mean the Community of communities each of which is a wikipedia, or
wiktionary, or wikibooks in a different language or a national chapter,
things get even more bizarre because that removes the Board from the
editors by one more step.
Single sign-on has been imminent for a long time. Fundamentally, a
member at any given time could be any signed-on person with at least a
predetermined number of edits in the past year
'cause right now, the "membership" issue
is in limbo. And being in
limbo, the new bylaws can't be approved.
If you guys could come up with a
* decent
* reasonable
* legally feasible
* technically implementable
solution...
That would be really cool.
Please try to not troll. This is serious business. But for the legal
able, please avoid editing the live version, but rather edit the
discussion page. Be practical (submit a solution rather than just
complain or grumble).
Of course, current candidates are *more* than welcome to have an opinion
on this.
It is here ------>
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bylaws_update
My first general observation about this set of by-laws is that they
should not contain what does not need to be contained. By-laws are
about establishing a structure that allows an organization to function.
Beginning with the first section, what's the purpose of showing the web
address in the by-laws? References to any websites should not be in the
by-laws since these are subject to often daily change. A look at the
edit history of [[Wiki]] will be enough to substantiate that.
The Statement of Purpose needs to be greatly simplified. Many of the
details here can be expected to change over time. Why not simply say
something like:
* The purpose of The Foundation is to promote and institute the
universal free access to all knowledge based on the principles of
mutual respect of editors, neutral point of view and respect for
copyright.
The current section on "Community" is nothing more than an exercise in
condescension. It purports to support communities without saying what
that really means.
TRUSTEES
The key issue now is number and composition. I'm not dealing now with
some of the issues in this part, but this should not imp[ly that I am
without opinions.
I am not entirely opposed to an open-ended maximum for the number of
trustees, but there needs to be some recognition that if the total
number of trustees becomes too high the Board could become unmanageable.
If the total number of Trustees is to be flexible it is not appropriate
that the number of member elected trustees could remain stuck at two. I
would suggest that at least 2/3 of the Trustees be from the community,
and that at least 1/3 of the Trustees be elected by the community. (To
be clear, hat 1/3 would be included in the previous 2/3.) This would
leave the remainder as potentially from outside. It should be noted
that if a 3/4 vote is required for certain fundamental changes it would
be very difficult for rogue membership to subvert the purposes of the
Foundation.
The other restriction would be to forbid the appointment of any person
to the Board if that would result in the majority of the Board being
citizens of any one country.
ASSETS
The dissolution clause should specify who decides the allocation of
remaining funds to other charities. Preference should be given to other
organizations with a similar purpose. It should also be made clear that
to the extent that those funds had a foreign origin they could also be
distributed to foreign entities, notably chapters with a status similar
to that provided by IRC 501(c)(3) under foreign law.
MISCELLANEOUS
A simple majority is too low for by-law amendments.
Are seals still legally required in Florida? This seems to be an
obsolete concept in some jurisdictions.
There are other matters in the proposed by-laws that I would suggest
changing, but these are relatively less important. I'll save those
comments for later.
Ec