Ian Davis / ATCFT

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EGF Membership Debacle

Every member of the European Go Federation pays a membership fee, but not all organisations are paying the same fee. At some point in its history, it came to pass that the membership fee was calculated on the basis of the number of members which each federation had. This sort of structure is relatively common of course, and on the face of it, most people must have been in favour of it. Eventually though angry voices came to be heard. What was it that they were angry about?

Well the largest federation, Germany, was tired of paying so much, particularly when others were not paying as much as they should. Who was not paying as much as they should? Here there was a kind of "We all know the answer, but we are not going to say" situation. A finger was pointed in a certain direction, but nobody was allowed to look at the finger. The obvious solution was mooted, each federation pays on the basis of its number of rated members. Back came the answer - No! This cannot be allowed because of privacy laws. So hurrah for privacy legislation for safeguarding us from sanity!

So what was to be done? Somehow the solution came to be that we should massively hike up the fee the smallest federations paid. Federations who had a number of members only in double figures. No longer 50 euro, the minimum went up to 200 euro, because on the spur of the moment, it was decided that everyone ought to be able to afford 200 euro. As it turned out, most federations felt they could not, but this was not to detract from the merits of the decision which was taken. Nor was the fact that the projected income gain from this, if all the small members did pay up their full dues, was vastly smaller than the missing income.

Within another few years, it was decided that the more you paid, or rather, the more members you admitted to having, the more votes you should have. 4 tiers were thus created.

So what is the upshot of all this activity? Germany is still paying the most, those who remain nameless are still said to be incorrectly reporting their membership numbers, and the small nations were shafted both financially and electorally. There you have democracy in action in the EGF!

GIC, list of subtasks

  • Translate introduction
  • Correct all game records - DONE
  • Game 1 DONE
  • Game 2 DONE
  • Game 3 DONE
  • Game 4 DONE
  • Game 5 DONE
  • Game 6 DONE
  • Game 7 translate text - DOING
  • Game 7 create figures - DOING
  • Game 7 publish to pdf

W1 W8


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