Thanks for raising this - good question.
My understanding is that a large proportion of members in Wikimedia Germany,
for instance, are sleeping members who pay their dues and do nothing else. I
don't think is particularly problematic - you will always end up with some
variation of the 80:20 rule operating (passive and active participants) and to
a large extent the more members and more income you have the better.
There are two specific issues with sleeping members: if, say, I got 50 friends
to sign up just before the AGM, we could easily arrange to sweep the board
election next year. This was a particular risk when the chapter was small when
it was being started and may be a risk again after the fundraiser should we end
up with large amounts of cash to spend. Lets not make it easy for people to
abuse the process!
The other consequence is pretty minor in practice, but there are certain
statutory requirements that relate to a proportion of the membership, such as:
- At least 10% of members have to be at the AGM to have a valid meeting
- Written resolutions require 50% of members to sign up
- 10% of the membership can require the directors to call an extraordinary
general meeting
Having said all this, my view is that now would be an appropriate time to make
the membership process easier - especially given our target of 100 members by
the next AGM.
Andrew
----- "Jarry1250" <jarry1...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> From: "Jarry1250" <jarry1...@googlemail.com>
> To: wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Sent: Sunday, 20 September, 2009 16:55:14 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain, Ireland,
> Portugal
> Subject: [Wikimediauk-l] Ease of becoming a member
>
> Hey all.
>
> Before the proper debate begins, I was just trying to work out my own
> views on how easy it should be for donors to officially join WMUK, it
> occurred to me that there is a huge black hole in my knowledge, and I
> was hoping someone might be able to fill it. Is there a /negative/
> effect related to having inactive ("freebie") members*, and do other
> projects keep track of how many of their members regularly contribute to
> discussions?
>
> Thanks,
> Jarry1250
>
> * i.e. those that were going to donate an amount equivalent to
> membership anyway.
> --
> Jarry1250
> http://en.wikipedia.org/User:Jarry1250
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia UK mailing list
> wikimediau...@wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
> WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
>
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia UK mailing list
wikimediau...@wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediauk-l
WMUK: http://uk.wikimedia.org
