[Wikipedia-l] Stop for a moment, please

[Alex T.]

From: "Ulrich Fuchs" <mail at ulrich-fuchs.de>

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).

You raise some interesting point Ulrich that are worth considering.
I have previously mentioned the issue of the informal association of
Wikipedians
on meta: http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Wikimedians
and I am glad you recognized a main point, just because there is a legal
entity
that does not define all the activities of all the members. Just think of
some
organization that allows people to use its facilities, i.e. a club or
recreational
centre for instance. There are rules, i.e. only members can use it, they can
only use if for legal purposes. There may also be costs for membership dues
or even pay per use service fees, i.e. you want eat in the club restaurant,
you
have to pay for your food (perhaps at a subsidized or profit free rate).

I see Wikimedia/Wikipedia the same way.  There are things members can do,
i.e. create accounts, edit pages. Create their own language Wikipedia or
other
Wikimedia project.  However, there are community wide standards, i.e. no
advertising, no personal attacks, etc.. There is structure to each project
as well.
We even have a cafe on some Wikipedias like the Francophone Bistro! (though
coffee and sandwiches are not yet available there ;).  Anyone can start a
trust fund
or a private foundation whose purpose would be to donate money to Wikimedia
to support its worthy endeavors. There does not need any permission to do
that
from Wikimedia or Jimbo, just as no permission is needed to create a user
account
or edit anywhere in the Wikimedia universe, so each individual Wikimedia has
autonomy and it could not be otherwise, but there is an overarching
structure, the
original data is all on a set of computers owed by Wikimedia. It must
maintain
standards in order to convince the tax authorities in the US that it has a
valid
not-for-profit charitable purpose and it must maintain some control over its
members.

All membership organizations do that if they mention it in their bylaws or
not.
Just read Robert's Rules of Order that is the standard rule for
parliamentary
bodies and associational organizations in the United States.  It is an
inherent right
of an organization to have some body that is able to remove members for some
reason as well as discipline them. Why not have it stated and codified
rather than
remain an undocumented right.  It seems good to me that it is stated in the
bylaws
because then members can argue about it, put pressure on the board to change
it and make sure that it is only used for proper purposes so as not to
subvert the
goals of the organization.