Membership opt in
As of 2006 no membership is available on the Wikimedia Foundation.
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Following a membership meeting on October 22, 2004, Wikimedia Foundation membership will be on an opt-in basis.
All contributors are eligible to become members. A volunteer member is not required to complete or sign and send any form to the Foundation. The way to become a member is to turn up to vote or to opt-in via an option that will be made available via preferences at a later date. All users who opt-in (by voting or checking a box in preferences) have the option of opting-out by unchecking a box in preferences.
Former proposal[edit]
- This proposal is now obsolete as membership will be opt-in
From the Article III, section 1B:
- VOLUNTEER ACTIVE MEMBERSHIP: This membership shall consist of all persons interested in supporting the activities of the Foundation who have contributed under a user name to any Wikimedia project prior to the election ballot request deadline. The only other qualification for membership shall be the creation of a user account on some Wikimedia project. Volunteer Active Members shall have all the privileges of active members except for voting for the Contributing Active Member Representative. Each Volunteer Active Member and each Contributing Active Member shall have the right to vote for the Volunteer User Representative to the Board of Trustees.
It is not clear where every logged in user is a member by default since this says all persons interested in supporting the activities of the Foundation. Are we assuming that any user who does not opt out is interested? Or do they need to opt in to be interested? Since opting in would be a lot more hassle than opting out, and it's probably fairly safe to assume that people who are editing are interested in supporting our activities (since by editing there, they are doing this anyway), the default could be that all logged in users are members.
Since some people will not want to be members, they need to be able to opt out.
Article III, section 4.2 1.3.1.2 B. VOLUNTEER ACTIVE MEMBERSHIP:
- WRITTEN RESIGNATION. Any member may resign from the Foundation by submitting a written resignation to the Secretary. Such resignation shall be effective as of the date received by the Foundation, unless said resignation specifies another date. The Board at it's sole discretion may maintain or remove any such user's account from any of its projects upon such resignation.
Submitting a written resignation to the Secretary is not enough since a person should also have to prove they are the user they are claiming to be. The easiest way to do this is to edit a wiki page whilst logged in to their account. This page could be used for opt-outs. Opt-out will need to be public, not private since the election officials need to have a list of who to strike out, and the people checking the vote log need to understand why users were struck out. Having opt-out on a public wiki page also enables a user to check the edit was really by them, and prevents people being able to forge opt-out letters from other people.
Membership will be automatically revoked at the point a user adds their name to this page. Editing the page will be counted as the resignation having been "received by the Foundation". This will not be enforced by technical means at this point because membership options are not currently part of the user table. If non-members try to vote, the Election Officials can remove their vote.
Article III, section 4.2 1.3.1.2 B. VOLUNTEER ACTIVE MEMBERSHIP:
- The Board at it's sole discretion may maintain or remove any such user's account from any of its projects upon such resignation.
The Board can decide whether users who have opted out get to keep their account. It is proposed that the default is that accounts will be maintained, rather than needing a vote on this every time.