Am Freitag, 23. Januar 2004 17:11 schrieb Jimmy Wales:
Ivo Köthnig wrote:
Gathering money is the first step. Since we do not know exacly, how much money this will be, we can not exactly plan, what to do with this money.
Gathering money is not the first step, then. It would be irresponsible for us to gather money without a plan for what to do with the money.
No, the problem is that we have many ideas what to do, but there is no money to realize that. Of course you have these plans before collecting money, but we dont go to the details until we have it. That was, what I meant with first step is collecting money (in bottom of the mail are some more detailed examples).
And of course the very first step is to found that "e.V." to make it easier to collect the money and spread the risks over more than one or two persons.
And as Kurt sayed thats not the only reason. For example, we want an official organisation which can speak for the project. At the moment we always have to say: "Oh, this is Kurt, he has written some articles, like 10000 others." (Note: Yes, it are so many registered users in the german wikipedia now.) It sounds much better if you say: "This is Kurt (or whoever). He is the president of the German Wikimedia Foundation..."
For the englisch wikipedia that never was a big problem since there was always Jimbo, who has started the project, which sounds good enough...
Or let there be some problems with copyright and someone in germany get sued? An offical german organisation could help much faster in that case.
Next point is, if someone violates our copylefts in germany (what allready happens). Here is nobody, who is able to create pressure to such a person. You can not write: "Hey, I am Ivo Köthnig, I have written some articles in the wikipedia. Please stop violating the GFDL."
That also are some examples which show, that it is not so bad to collect some money unspecific.
Some money is needed for the organisation itself. For example each year we have to held a meeting, and every member has to be informed. We actually dont know if it is allowed to use e-mail for that (what we would prefer), but if not we have to use snail-mail, and for that reason we would need at least 1? per member each year.
I will gladly provide funds for anything of that nature. I would prefer that we keep all overhead for the use of donor funds to an absolute minimum for as long as possible.
I too ...
But as you can imagine it makes no sence to think about all that in detail, since we do not know, if we collect enough money to finance that.
I think you have it exactly backwards. Collecting money with no specific plan for what is to be done with it is not a good idea at all.
That strongly depends on what dimension of money you think. If we talk about ordering new servers which costs between 10 or 20 TUSD, thats right. Than you should make a detailed plan of what you exacly want. At least to know how much this will cost in the end. (but even than you dont think about if you plug the usb-mouse in the left or the right port before you have got the money).
If we talk about making stickers or button to dispense them (may for free to promote wikipedia), you would not start to ask people to donate that 100 € you need for this. You would look in the cash box and decide wether you have left only 50 € to make 100 Buttons or if you have the 100 € to make 200 Buttons. And the best case would always be to have enough money to fullfill those small ideas.
There is nothing to prevent Europeans from being members of the international Wikimedia Foundation, either. There is nothing to prevent the international Wikimedia Foundation from engaging in any or all of the kinds of activities that you mentioned, either, either in Europe or in America.
Of course there is a problem for many people being a member of the international Wikimedia Foundation, since not everybody speaks english.
Also it makes no sence for me donating money for the Wikimedia Foundation, try to realize some projects in Europe or Germany and ask the foundation for money which is than send back (keep in mind what you sayed about the overhead).
--Ivo Köthnig