Being a member of a company (and in future a member of
a charity)
will bring a certain responsibility, which some may find is not what
they want.
Technical point: Wiki UK Ltd. is a charity now - a charity is defined
as a non-profit company with charitable objects. Registration is not
required to be a charity, just to be a "registered charity". That's
not important, though.
I agree people should have the option of supporting us without the
responsibility (however small) that goes along with membership of a
company, however it should be up to them, not anyone else.
A company with 1,000 members will be hard to manage.
However, a
company with 100 members and 1,000 friends will be much easier to
keep running.
I don't see anything particularly hard to manage with a 1000 members
company. Most people won't attend the AGMs and will vote by proxy. If
a significant number do attend the AGM then it would need to be run a
little more formally, a show of hands isn't likely to work for
anything but the most uncontroversial resolutions, but that's not too
difficult. I don't see how you can disenfranchise 90% of the
membership just for convenience, it goes completely against the
democratic ideals of the chapter.
I believe most people would want to be a
"friend" rather than a
"member", and I mean "member" in the technical sense of
"guarantor
member".
At this point, you're just guessing. The lists of people interested in
being guarantor and supporting members were pretty similar in length.