Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
The bylaws say otherwise at the moment - they give the board of trustees the right to interfere with the projects. And, giving you the same answer Jimmy gave the German wikipedians: this may be fine now, but we have to think of the situation in 20 years. Even in 20 years, it should be guaranteed that the welsh wikipedians decide over the policies of the welsh wikipedia, the wikibookists over wikibooks and so on.
The wikimedia foundation is for keeping the servers running, collecting funds and defending the projects against legal threats, but not for enforcing rules (or a however defined code of ethics) upon all projects.
I'm not sure how you can really get an absolute guarantee of that though. If the Wikimedia Foundation owns the servers, it has de facto control over everything, whether the bylaws say so or not. And even if the bylaws set up some sort of "self-government" for sub-Wikimedia entities, the bylaws can always be changed by a future Board of Trustees. Unless each Wikipedia is to purchase and administer its own servers, and choose its own name (other than "Wikipedia"), I don't see how we can have projects not be subordinate, at least in a legal and technical sense, to the main organization.
-Mark