User talk:Yair rand/WMF membership proposal

Closed legal membership

The background and problem are valid, but I am not sure that creating a "closed WMF legal membership" is appropriate (or even legal, under the law that governs WMF). I would be pretty comfortable if we just give the authority to two institutions, the Global Council and Affiliate Chairpersons, to elect/select the community-elected and affiliate-selected (CEAS) Board members. dwf² ✉ 08:02, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

@dwf²: Re legality: I'm not a lawyer, but it looks like Florida nonprofit law allows for nonprofit organizations with (member-appointed, "closed") memberships that elect Board members. The Board could replace article 3 of the bylaws with a section outlining member rights, and establish an initial membership which would be responsible for "updating" the membership as necessary to match the membership of the source groups. The Affiliate Chairpersons group is not a legal entity (and the GC might not end up being one either, who knows), and I suspect that the only practical way to give them direct authority would be basically to take the list of individual Affiliate chairpersons and make them WMF members, to be updated as appropriate, but again, IANAL. --Yair rand (talk) 08:44, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Agree, I am not a member of the Florida bar either, so maybe it is best for someone who is to give an opinion on this one. I am afraid that in the whole Board governance debacle, the legal side needs to be the primary driver, since we are dealing with a highly legalistic reform of a legally-registered entity anyway. On the other hand, in this case I find it quite curious that the Chairpersons could be considered *more* democratic compared to, say, AffCom; since their mandate was derived directly from their members. dwf² ✉ 09:49, 1 February 2021 (UTC)