Prohibiting something, name to be decided

This is discussing proposals that "An individual's right to vote shall not be affected in any way by whether that individual has paid dues or made a donation to the Foundation" be incorporated in the Wikimedia Foundation's governing documents, eliminating any contradictory terms.

One consequence would be the replacement of the board position specifically selected by votes only of dues paying members.

Another consequence would be that, unlike the vast majority of membership organizations with dues paying members, those dues paying members would be denied *any* vote on the board of directors beyond that available to people who are *not* dues paying members.

Yes, that's one of the objectives - to decouple voting from money. No reason why members can't have a vote specifically for them, if the membership requirement is something other than money and any donation is voluntary, just like the money raised so far.

An alternative suggested was "An individual's right to vote should not be affected in any way by whether that individual has paid dues or made a donation".

Sounds good. I've changed to that wording instead of the previous "the Wikimedia Foundation prohibit the provision of votes on the Wikimedia Foundation Board which are directly tied to payments of money, or donations of any form of physical goods."

Oppose the existence of this poll edit

I oppose even the existence of this highly inappropriate "loaded question" poll. Virtually all nonprofit organizations have membership dues, and usually all voting for board positions is restricted to paid-in-full members. Wikimedia is already somewhat unusual in this respect, giving a vote for one seat on the board to people who just edit our website. Just anyone can "edit this page", anyone can "vote for this board member". If there is a legitimate debate to be had about having dues-paying members, we can have it, but not via the means of a poll so badly named as this one. Jimbo Wales 21:45, 22 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This isn't only about dues-paying members. It's about all positions restricted to those who have donated money or are selected by only those who have paid money. A US$10,000,000 donation shouldn't result in a voting seat on the board, regardless of the person who's doing the donating. The board would surely listen carefully to what that donor had to say anyway. Open source projects are not traditional on-profits. Some non-profits of our type include:

  • Free Software Foundation, creator of the GPL and GFDL. Has a voluntary associate membership with no voting positions but some benefits. Their board members appear not to be selected based on donations.
  • Debian linux (constitution), with no positions tied to donations.

On the dues paying members side, by far the greatest value is in the encyclopedias and other works produced with the help of Wikimedia Foundation hosting and services, not in the Foundation or the money donated to it. That's all freely given and made available to the Foundation and others. In calculations for the NIH grant proposal we used US$0.005 per word and $US20,000,000 was mentioned by one of those working on that proposal as a conservative value by that measure. Money donations so far are below 1% of that and I have the impression that a substantial proportion of those donations are also from those writing the works. The contributors have already provided the Foundation with work of tremendous value. Jamesday 00:19, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)