[Wikipedia-l] Why "Wikimedia Germany", "Wikimedia France", "Wikimedia ????"

Fri Jan 23 11:31:13 UTC 2004

Am Freitag, 23. Januar 2004 11:48 schrieb Walter Vermeir:
> A "Wikimedia" in Europa can be useful I think but is it really necessary
> to setup different organizations for all the countrys?

Because there is no such thing as a European law in effect. Laws by the 
European parliament have to be adopted by the member states. In the end, an 
association in Europe must always be an association in a particular country. 
If we found something in France, it will be already difficult for german 
contributors to donor funds there and get a tax exemption, because that is - 
I guess - only possible if you donor to a german organization and so on. If 
we found something in the UK, bank transfers will be especially expensive, 
because this is a non-Euro currency. Vice versa, if UK people want to 
transfer mony to a bank account e.g. in the Netherlands. Furthermore, you 
need to organize things like board meetings - it's already hard for us to get 
enough contributing people from Germany together in Berlin, you can imagine 
how hard it will be to get the contributing people from all over Europe 
together in Paris or Rome...

So we need a bottom-up approach. We need local organizations in each country, 
they should join in some way in an European roof organization (so only member 
delegates and not members must physically meet for the european association), 
and that european association again should be a member (if that's the right 
term) of the Wikimedia foundation. But allow the things to grow - we must 
start somewhere at the bottom, that's what we are doing right now.

Uli