On Wednesday 21 January 2004 09:04 pm, Kurt Jansson wrote:
The German Wikipedia community is working on setting
up an
"eingetragener Verein" (I found these translations on
dict.leo.org:
"incorporated society", "membership corporation", "registered
association", don't know which one fits best). Presumably the foundation
meeting will take place in february, we will apply for tax exempt status
soon afterwards.
Our goals are
1. to be able to collect donations (tax-free)
2. to communicate with organisations from outside the project in a more
professional, official way (e.g. with universities or foundations)
There has also been a bit of talk about using the association as an
democratic institution for decision making, but nothing has been decided
yet. I'd say we should only use the association for this in case of
emergency or when all other attempts fail.
For more information you can feed Babelfish with these URLs:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verein
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verein/Satzung
I shall volunteer to translate the pertinent parts from
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verein if there is interest among the
current decision makers (ie. Jimbo)
Jimbo, is this okay for you? Do you have any wishes or worries?
The association will support all Wikimedia projects, not just Wikipedia.
We will support the whole international project, and transfer part of
the donations to the foundation if this is legaly possible, but focus on
the German-speaking projects. Of course we're not planning a fork, and
of course there is no cabal, at least not a German one.
If donations for wikipedias (no matter what language) do not go exclusively
towards paying for 'central' things like hardware, bandwidth (in the future),
wikipedia 1.0, getting some DB expert to optimise mediawiki, etc., then what
does the money get spent on? Publicity? (I still maintain that word-of-mouth
is superior to every other form of publicity). Conventions (synonym:
"Meetings" - as "conventions" is ambiguous)? Juristiction-specific
legal
representation and advice?
In other words: What is the motivation for not giving all the money to
wikimedia? (obviously minus upkeep expenses). I'm not trying to be
antagonistic, just inquisitive.
I've read de:Wikipedia:Verein but have not found a reason (under "Gründe")
why
not de-facto all of the money should go to wikimedia. The main reasons (given
on de:Wikipedia:Verein) for the establishment of the Verein is effective
communication with the German-speaking populace, the ability to solicit
tax-deductable donations, and officially representing the interests of
wikimedia in Germany. (about the last point, it is written on
de:Wikipedia:Verein that a direct intervention by the wikimedia foundation is
not possible because of the language barriers and the unsettled ("unsettled"
in the sense that no proper conclusion has been reached) legal situation /
legal position. (Please do inform me if the translation is not 100% accurate)
Best,
Sascha Noyes
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