[Wikipedia-l] Stop for a moment, please

[Ulrich Fuchs]

I think, before we go into any detail on chapters, influence of locals, set 
and elected trustees and so on we should spend a little more time and think 
of what is actually needed if we talk about a global structure pushing the 
wikipedia/wikimedia idea forward. The following are a few thoughts, open for 
comment. I am using "Wikimedia" here in this posting not as a name for the 
current foundation, but for the big-picture-project, that we all feel part of 
and that was founded as "Wikipedia" by Jimmy and later extendend to cover all 
sort of wikibased content ("Wikimedia"). 

We will all agree that there needs to be one organization that runs servers 
and acts as a service provider, because otherwise there would be no Wiki. 
That organization obviously needs to have the final decision making on what 
is on the servers, because the people running that service will be 
responsible for the content. However, we don't want to have that control 
extended in a way that the people running the server are able to enforce 
general guidelines and rules on the Wikimedia project and it's subprojects as 
such. Much of the current headaches some people have with the current bylaws 
arise from that intermingling of service and project.

The best way to deal with that issue would be two seperate the corporation 
running the wiki service from the corporation being "Wikimedia". Wikimedia 
would just buy in (or get donated, we don't need to discuss that in detail 
already at this point) the *service* to run the wiki from that other 
corporation (I call that one "Service Provider" for now). This way, the 
service provider has full control of the user accounts, can block users if 
the put copyright violating content on the servers and so on. But if the 
service provider blocks users for reasons, that are not understood by 
Wikimedia, Wikimedia can just go ahead and find another service provider.

Wikimedia, on the other hand, would be the organization that actually *is the 
project* (not the service). That organization needs to be
*   democratically organized
*   global
*   bound now and for all future to the common goal of creating free content 
without paying authors or officials; however we must consider that there 
might be a need in the future to have employees, if the project get's Big 
with a capital B.
*   allowing a country substructure for better fundraising and representation
*   allowing a project substructure for setting project policies and 
representation (these are two different things, it might be a necessary to 
speak for the *german language Wikipedia* at one time and for the *german 
Wikimedians" at another time
*   organized in a way that these local chapters and subproject chapters form 
the organization bottom up and not top down.

Lars Aronssen mentioned on the german list the "Medizins sans frontiere" (is 
ist "medicines without frontieres" in english?). As far as I can see, they 
are a network of local organizations, there is no superstructure, however, 
they operate together without breaking up since 1971 and even got the peace 
nobel price. I think organizing that way would be a very good thing.

What they have is a common, but very short "charta" that fixes four major 
points one and forever. That charta is declared as part of the local and 
project organization bylaws, but - apart from that - those organizations are 
legally independant. 

However, I do not think that we can do completely without some sort of 
superstructure. That superstructure is probably needed to sign contracts with 
the service provider mentioned above (it could also be done by the local 
chapter of the country the service provider resides in), to draw up general 
rules and to change the charta in case of need (consider a drastical 
technological or copyright law change in 20 years from now that would have a 
dramatic impact). Such a change of the charta would have to be adopted by the 
local and project chapters. But it's very likeley that they will adapt it, 
since they had influence on the revision. Third, those superstructure would 
have the rights on the Wikipedia/Wikimedia names.

To avoid a "democratic takeover" of that superstructure by a single interest 
group, and to avoid language barriers for members, this should have no 
individual persons as members - only project and local suborganizations (It 
will be a hard thing to tune the voting influence, but I think it's 
feasable). Those local and project organizations would have to send 
representatives, if a physical meeting is needed for some reason.

Probably I should draw a nice ASCII art image somewhere, but I think you got 
the picture: If we start to think really global now, we must go in the 
direction outlined above and seperate the "to-do's" that are needed to keep 
our idea working into seperate organizations. Organizations that act 
together, but still control each other in a way that no single person with 
superpowers is needed to keep the Wikimedia idea alive.

Uli