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 :