The articles already specify:
2.3(a) The Directors may only refuse an application for
membership if, acting reasonably and properly, they consider it to be
in the best interests of the charity to refuse the application.
This strikes me as fairly broad but also means the Board will need a good reason to reject
an applicant.
My reading of these draft rules are that they would further restrict
the Board's discretion on these matters. Is this the intention? I
certainly agree that the membership form should explicitly require an
applicant to state that they support the charity's Object and wont
bring it into disrepute but I'm not sure it's a good idea to restrict
the Board like this.
The draft then goes on to say:
"Invalid reasons for rejecting membership include behaviour, activity or inactivity
on the Wikipedia Foundation websites"
What if, say a repeat sock-puppet or vandal applied to join the
charity? Would their membership help us achieve our Object or would it
hinder us? What if they had disrupted, say, discussions on these meta
pages or the email list? Both these examples could be legitimate
reasons for refusing membership. Restricting the Board as proposed
could end up causing real problems for a Board that wanted to bar a
disruptive applicant but found they couldn't.
Andrew