[Wikipedia-l] Time to set up Wikimedia ProjectCommittees
Delirium
delirium at rufus.d2g.com
Sun Jan 25 04:06:55 UTC 2004
Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
> The bylaws say otherwise at the moment - they give the board of
> trustees the right to interfere with the projects. And, giving you the
> same answer Jimmy gave the German wikipedians: this may be fine now,
> but we have to think of the situation in 20 years. Even in 20 years,
> it should be guaranteed that the welsh wikipedians decide over the
> policies of the welsh wikipedia, the wikibookists over wikibooks and
> so on.
>
> The wikimedia foundation is for keeping the servers running,
> collecting funds and defending the projects against legal threats, but
> not for enforcing rules (or a however defined code of ethics) upon all
> projects.
I'm not sure how you can really get an absolute guarantee of that
though. If the Wikimedia Foundation owns the servers, it has de facto
control over everything, whether the bylaws say so or not. And even if
the bylaws set up some sort of "self-government" for sub-Wikimedia
entities, the bylaws can always be changed by a future Board of
Trustees. Unless each Wikipedia is to purchase and administer its own
servers, and choose its own name (other than "Wikipedia"), I don't see
how we can have projects not be subordinate, at least in a legal and
technical sense, to the main organization.
-Mark
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