[Foundation-l] Some question about Wikimedia Hong Kong

[Michael Bimmler]

On 10/24/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Instead I would prefer that chapters were based around logistics of
> transport, population, and comunication (languages).
I'm somewhat opposed to the concept of basing chapters around e.g.
languages. Because this would mean, that we'd have for example just
one "german-language-chapter" covering Germany, Austria and
Switzerland. You know what was the very initial reason to set up an
independent Swiss chapter? Tax deductibility of donations. If there is
an association is Germany or in the USA, Swiss (and Austrian) people
are less likely to donate money, as they can't deduce it from taxes.
Of course, this would be the same problem with an "english-language"
chapter or a "french-language" chapter or a population-based chapter
("Alaska+Canada") or a transport-based chapter (I can't find an
example here).
Further, much legal things are easier, if the association is based
there where it operates (not only tax deductibility but also doing
marketing, renting locations, all the postal mail stuff [postage] and
so on).
So I'd propose a kind of "one judicature per chapter" (note the word
order) system. This means, one chapter cannot serve / operate in
several countries, but there is still the possibility of
"sub-chapters" in different parts of the country (think of "Wikimedia
Suisse Romandie" or "Wikimedia US Pacific Coast" or "Wikimedia North
Germany" or whatever)

Regards
Michael

>Not of course in
> many cases this will give a result that lines up with existing
> boarders either national or sub-national but I would dislike makeing
> such a link explicit.
>
> --
> geni
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