Sascha Noyes wrote:
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?
There has been a tendency to not "give out the bear's fur before he's shot" which means not to discuss the spending of money we haven't got. So I don't know what will be decided in the end. Maybe 90% of all donations will go to the foundation, maybe much less.
One problem is that we aren't completely sure if it's legaly possible to transfer money from a tax exempt German association to an American foundation. I'll talk about this with a German tax collector.
And of course the association has administrative expenses (invitation for an annual meeting) that need to be covered.
Publicity? (I still maintain that word-of-mouth is superior to every other form of publicity).
Yes it is, but there might be communities where we need to have "multiplicators" who spread the word. I think adverts in some handpicked scientific journals might be a good idea, but others will object.
Conventions (synonym: "Meetings" - as "conventions" is ambiguous)?
We could cover part of Jimbo's costs to come to the Wizards of OS 3 in Berlin this summer. :-)
Juristiction-specific legal representation and advice?
Seems to be a good idea to me, yes.
In other words: What is the motivation for not giving all the money to wikimedia?
We could give all the money to the foundation, but personally I'd like to see a democratically elected international board first. And I want some administration overhead ("hydrocephalus") for my money :-)
Kurt