Talk:Membership fees/Proposition 2
In the first system, the member is asked from which country he comes from. If a local association is available in this country, he is redirected to it (or warned there is a local association in his country, so he could possibly benefit of tax deductions). The idea is essentially to ask for a different amount depending on the country of origin, so as to take into account country wealth.
Which will be the benefit of asking participant his country ?
I see three benefits, some of which are immediate, while others are more "long term" vision
First benefit : the dues will be of a different amount depending on the country where the member is living. So, it will be proportional to what the level of life in this country and more equitable.
Second benefit : Membership page will be proposed in a language understandable by any future member from this country
This page will be per default in english to start with, but should over time be in the language(s) spoken in the country. We could at least quickly start with languages such as german, french, japanese and spanish, and have multilingual pages for all countries where these languages are used.
Third benefit : This is a more long term vision. I expect that in a couple of years, we will have a whole bunch of local chapters. It make sense to propose automatically to users of a specific country, to pay membership at the local chapter of his country of choice.
Right now : given that there is only one chapter, I suggest that German membership is proposed per default for all countries where german is spoken (or to Germans from Germany only), and that WMF membership is proposed by default on all other country pages.
In any cases, it should be possible to anyone, at anytime, to support WMF or to support any local chapter of his choice, whatever his country. It may not be sound from a strictly financial perspective for the member, but members should have the opportunity to choose to support directly the Foundation itself (even if they have a local chapter in their country) and members should have the opportunity to support a local chapter even though it is in a different country (for example, a french speaking living in Japan may wish to support the chapter in France, as he knows this latter goal is to broadly support french language).
Over time : while keeping possible at any time to join WMF or any chapter directly, I guess that when many chapters are set, most pages will focus on the local chapter(s) available in their country. It can be decided on a case by case option, which countries are redirected to a local chapter/WMF page or to a simple WMF page. For example, German chapter may decide he is primarily meant to cover Germany. In this case, the dual page will only appear when the user select Germany
Which will be the drawbacks of this system ?
First, it is more complicated (compared to proposal 2) to set. There is more development need. We also need to provide a complete list of countries. We also need to define the amount asked to each country (and this is very likely to raise issues….).
Note : we won't necessarily set a different amount for each country, but rather will set 3 or 4 groups of countries (but that might still raise issues)
Second : some participants mentionned that rich countries could host poor people, but mostly that poor countries could have very wealthy people…so, the “equality” could actually results in unfairness and loss of potential income.
Third : some participants mentionned that people could “claim” being in one country, and be in another, to be able to pay less.
Start a discussion about Membership fees/Proposition 2
Talk pages are where people discuss how to make content on Meta the best that it can be. You can use this page to start a discussion with others about how to improve Membership fees/Proposition 2.
