Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Bylaws.

On 1/22/06, Gordon Joly gordon.joly@pobox.com wrote:

...

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_UK we find past meetings listed as follows:

* 9th October 2005: London
* 16th October 2005: IRC
* 13th November 2005: IRC
* 27th November 2005: London
* 15th January 2006: London

And Jimbo was present at the 27th November meeting.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:The_Royal_Oak_bootstrap_meet.jpg

:-)

Ok, I can see two ways to set up the chapter (as apposed to the charity / company). (1) The foundation could agree to call the charity a chapter, and all members of the company would be members of the chapter. (2) The foundation could agree to let the company found a chapter as a separate and possibly informal membership organisation.

In both cases there would have to be agreement between the foundation and the UK company, but there are advantages and disadvantages to the two approaches. One issues is that the company can not have aims that exactly mirror the foundations (i.e. to run the wiki* websites) as this would not be seen as charitable in the UK. The aims (objects) in the current draft are relatively broad and would allow the company to pass funds on to the foundation (as well as performing other charitable activities), but the foundation may not want a chapter to have such broad aims. A second problem is that, as I understand it, under 18s could not subscribe to the company and so would not be able to become members of the chapter. In the second model the foundation could have more control of the bylaws of the chapter, that would just be managed by the charity in fulfillment of its objects. One thing we would have to look into is if subscriptions paid to the chapter (via the charity) and passed on to the foundation would be eligible for gift aid. The advantage of this more complex arrangement is that under 18s could join, and the bylaws of the chapter could include clauses such as "the member must be a regular editor of wikipedia" - something that would be possibly illegal for a chapter set up under option (1).

Views?

Andrew