[Foundation-l] Community representation

[Brianna Laugher]

On 12/01/2008, Robert Rohde <rarohde at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Membership associations (and things like company stockholders) generally
> have powers to force issues like these, but as you may remember the WMF has
> no membership.  I could be wrong, but I don't believe there is any formal
> process currently existing for the wiki communities to force the WMF to
> consider or act on anything.  Which pretty much just leaves whining about
> things.
>
> That's not to say that the WMF couldn't adopt such a process.

Right, this is my line of reasoning too.
However, you can't say something will happen when X% of the
member/community do something unless you know how big the
membership/community is. And you don't know how big the
membership/community is until you define what it is to be a member (of
the comunity) or the membership requirements. These are still
unresolved problems.

Some ideas.
1) Memberhip by paying membership fees. If this happens I think it
should come with legal power, ie membership of WMF. So it would mean
changing the bylaws. However I think there would be majoy concerns
about equity, in terms of is the fee reasonable in XYZ countries and
does Paypal even accept those countries' currencies. [I recently
looked at the membership of a couple of "digital rights" type
charities and while non-US citizens can join they really do seem to be
mainly concerned with Americans. I think WMF could not reasonably
adopt such a stance, so this is a problem.]

2) Membership by wiki requirement (single project 200 edits, > 6
months, not banned) + self-appointment, ie put your name on a list
somewhere.Can only sign up for membership for six months at a time,
due to the natural easy-come-easy-go nature of the community. This
limits "dead wood" membership, ie people who signed up ages ago but in
reality are no longer present.

Effeietsanders said "I think we should not be so "arrogant"  to
compare ourselves with a
whole country ;-)"
I don't think it is arrogance but we need to recognise the limitations
of that comparison. National citizenship generally doesn't have a
participation-in-society requirement. If I leave Australia and live in
every country of the world for a year each, I will still be an
Australian citizen even if I hate Australia, have no idea who the
government is or even where it is on the map. It's not trivial to pick
up citizenship of another country, generally.

However, it is really easy to become a member of the Wikimedia
community. Just pick a project you like and do peaceful work for a few
months. There are no money or legal requirements. Time is the only
thing every person on the planet is given equally, 24 hours every day.
:)
So community membership is generally thought of as being related to
activity, I think. I don't think people want a definition where once
you've done enough editing, BOOM - you're a member for life. No,
you're a member as long as keep having some appropriate level of
activity. Easy come, easy go.

cheers
Brianna

-- 
They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment:
http://modernthings.org/