[Foundation-l] Report to the Board of Trustees June 2009-

[effe iets anders]

can someone kill this thread? Thanks.

2009/9/13 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>

> 2009/9/13 Austin Hair <adhair at gmail.com>:
> > On Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 9:41 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>> Wow, that's... pretty offensive, actually.
> >>
> >> If you are offended by statements of fact, that is your problem.
> >
> > I think it's fairly clear that I dispute the factualness of your
> statement.
>
> You take offence when people say something you deem to be mistaken? Or
> are you suggesting I knew what I said was untrue and said it to be
> intentionally malicious?
>
> >> Last time I checked, being a non-profit (and a charity if possible)
> >> *was* a requirement to be a Wikimedia chapter. The WMF does have
> >> experience of running a charity.
> >
> > I don't know when it was that you checked, because this has never been
> > a requirement.  In countries where there's some analog to what
> > Americans and Brits would call a non-profit, that's generally the
> > desired form, but different countries have different legal systems—WMF
> > Inc., for instance, is not a "charity" in the American sense of the
> > word—and we do now have chapters which are neither.
>
> I've looked it up, and I stand corrected - non-profit status is on the
> "guideline" page, not the "requirements" page. I knew I had seen it
> there somewhere.
>
> > That's not even the point, however.  WMF Inc. does not have experience
> > running a non-profit in, say, Brunei.  I couldn't tell you the
> > exchange rate in Brunei, much less what it costs to organize an event
> > there.  It's preposterous to assume that we can step in and throw
> > highly paid western consultants at a situation, with the poor,
> > incompetent Bruneians bowing to our superior wisdom and experience.
>
> If the WMF doesn't know what is appropriate and the local chapter
> people can be trusted to know what is appropriate (in some cases the
> local chapter may have the necessary experience and the WMF can defer
> to their expertise, but that isn't always the case), then the WMF
> needs to do the necessary research. They are responsible for what
> money that people have given them is spent on, so it falls to them to
> find out what spending is and isn't appropriate.
>
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