[Foundation-l] Should we offer to host citizendium?

Fri Nov 12 17:34:34 UTC 2010

On Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 10:12 AM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12 November 2010 14:57, Ziko van Dijk <zvandijk at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> I just cannot imagine that Larry Sanger could bear to see his beloved
>> Citizendium on a Wikimedia server, among all that child pornography he
>> is supposing there.
>
> It's not his any more. (Part of their problem is that he micromanaged
> it so closely no-one else knew just how dire its financial situation
> was until just recently.) Though he still controls the domain name.

What a mess.  Citizendium was legally a project of the Tides Center,
but just recently this month the Tides Center "officially withdrew
direct financial support for the project" (according to Wikipedia).
Now someone set up a paypal account registered as
citizendium at hotmail.com and is now asking for donations directly,
rather than going through the Tides Center, but as far as I can tell
there still is no legal organization set up to receive the donations.

Does Sanger legally own the domain name, or is his name just listed as
the owner in the whois records?  Does the Tides Center have a
trademark on citizendium.org, as it was, legally, their project?  Why
did the Tides Center withdraw financial support?  Where did all the
money go?

These are all questions which would have to be answered before WMF
should even consider getting involved.  To cover itself legally it
should have the agreement of Larry Sanger, the Tides Center, and at
least a majority of the Management Counsel
(http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Management_Council).