Lars wrote:
.. I strongly recommend that you all look at how the German chapter of ISOC (which is an "e.V.", see www.isoc.de) has solved this. I assume they have a working model already, that could be copied. In fact, the ISOC chapter model could be copied for more countries than Germany, if Wikipedians want to form local chapters in their area.
I agree - we should look into that. I also agree that a chapter system would be the best way to go. Then, if needed, we could have an affiliate in Europe that would coordinate national or lower level chapters in Europe (or we could just have chapters).
Their "Primer for Creating a Local ISOC Chapter" http://www.isoc.org/isoc/chapters/application/primer.shtml also mentions incorporation as one of the final steps of chapter formation and how the ISOC needs to sign-off on that (before that it mentions that the ISOC needs to approve the chapter's bylaws). So a chapter so formed (assuming it was incorporated as a tax-exempt non-profit) would have tax-deductible status and would firmly be part of the Wikimedia Foundation.
IMO, creating "sister" organizations is a bad idea for the reasons Jimbo gave. Plenty of organizations are international in nature so we should put our efforts into making Wikimedia into an international organization.
Please everybody be patient though - the bylaws were only recently adopted and for all practical purposes the foundation is still just Jimbo. So until we have a full board of trustees things will continue to move slowly - Jimbo is only one person.
I would suggest then for people to start to think about who they want to be on the board. I assume we will be having elections for that in the next month or so.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)