On Wednesday 21 January 2004 09:04 pm, Kurt Jansson wrote:
The German Wikipedia community is working on setting up an "eingetragener Verein" (I found these translations on dict.leo.org: "incorporated society", "membership corporation", "registered association", don't know which one fits best). Presumably the foundation meeting will take place in february, we will apply for tax exempt status soon afterwards.
Our goals are
- to be able to collect donations (tax-free)
- to communicate with organisations from outside the project in a more
professional, official way (e.g. with universities or foundations)
There has also been a bit of talk about using the association as an democratic institution for decision making, but nothing has been decided yet. I'd say we should only use the association for this in case of emergency or when all other attempts fail.
For more information you can feed Babelfish with these URLs: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verein http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verein/Satzung
I shall volunteer to translate the pertinent parts from http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verein if there is interest among the current decision makers (ie. Jimbo)
Jimbo, is this okay for you? Do you have any wishes or worries? The association will support all Wikimedia projects, not just Wikipedia. We will support the whole international project, and transfer part of the donations to the foundation if this is legaly possible, but focus on the German-speaking projects. Of course we're not planning a fork, and of course there is no cabal, at least not a German one.
If donations for wikipedias (no matter what language) do not go exclusively towards paying for 'central' things like hardware, bandwidth (in the future), wikipedia 1.0, getting some DB expert to optimise mediawiki, etc., then what does the money get spent on? Publicity? (I still maintain that word-of-mouth is superior to every other form of publicity). Conventions (synonym: "Meetings" - as "conventions" is ambiguous)? Juristiction-specific legal representation and advice?
In other words: What is the motivation for not giving all the money to wikimedia? (obviously minus upkeep expenses). I'm not trying to be antagonistic, just inquisitive.
I've read de:Wikipedia:Verein but have not found a reason (under "Gründe") why not de-facto all of the money should go to wikimedia. The main reasons (given on de:Wikipedia:Verein) for the establishment of the Verein is effective communication with the German-speaking populace, the ability to solicit tax-deductable donations, and officially representing the interests of wikimedia in Germany. (about the last point, it is written on de:Wikipedia:Verein that a direct intervention by the wikimedia foundation is not possible because of the language barriers and the unsettled ("unsettled" in the sense that no proper conclusion has been reached) legal situation / legal position. (Please do inform me if the translation is not 100% accurate)
Best, Sascha Noyes