Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation is an American non-profit foundation. Their main headquarters is in San Francisco in the United States. The Wikimedia Foundation runs many projects using the wiki idea and the MediaWiki software. These projects include Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, Wikivoyage, and Meta-Wiki.[3]
| Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. | |
|---|---|
| Abbreviation | WMF |
| Type | 501(c)(3), charitable organization |
| Location |
|
| Membership | Board-only |
| Key people |
|
There are many other wikis related to the foundation, but these are mostly smaller projects. They include the Wikimedia Foundation wiki, the MediaWiki wiki, the Test Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Incubator, Bugzilla, and the Wikimania wiki.
The foundation's creation was officially announced by Wikipedia co-founder[4][5] Jimmy Wales, who was running Wikipedia within his company Bomis, on June 20, 2003.
The foundation gets most of its funds from donations, as it is a nonprofit. It also looks for grants. Some companies have helped Wikimedia by giving free computer hardware, and by hosting servers. Since people can write the wikis, Wikimedia projects are free to use. Funds are used to run computer servers and to pay staff. The Foundation had 700 employees in 2023.
In 2013, Sue Gardner was the executive director.[6]
In 2015, Patricio Lorente was the Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board.[7]
In 2016, Katherine Maher became the executive director.
In 2018, María Sefidari is chair of the board.[2]
In 2022, Maryana Iskander became Chief Executive Officer, replacing Katherine Maher.
Projects
Content projects
As of 2021[update] Wikimedia has many content projects. These include:
- Wikipedia: An online encyclopedia.[8]
- Meta-Wiki: A place for talking about ideas about Wikimedia projects.
- Wikibooks: A collection of educational books.
- Wikidata: A shared collection of data that can be accessed by other projects.[9]
- Wikifunctions: A collection of code.
- Wikimedia Commons: A collection of free images, videos, and sounds. Things there can be used on other projects.
- Wikinews: A collection of news articles.
- Wikiquote: A collection of quotes.
- Wikisource: A library of source texts and documents.
- Wikispecies: A taxonomic collection of species.
- Wikiversity: A collection of educational materials.
- Wikivoyage: A travel guide.
- Wiktionary: A dictionary.
Infrastructure projects
There are other projects that help the Wikimedia movement's infrastructure and interface. They do this by making them work smoothly. These include:
- Kiwix: A community project that allows offline access to the content projects.[10]
- MediaWiki: The open-source platform that powers the Wikimedia projects.[11]
- Toolforge: A community space that hosts software projects.
- Volunteer Response Team: A community group that handles email inquiries.
- Wikimedia Cloud Services: A platform for shared cloud computing, based on OpenStack.
- Wikitech: A group of developers with a wiki and mailing list.
The different boards
Board of Trustees
The Board of Trustees in charge of all the affairs of the Foundation has ten members:
- four who are appointed by the Board itself;
- three who are selected by the community of all the different Wikimedia projects;
- two who are selected by the local chapters and thematic organizations;
- and one emeritus for the foundation's founder, Jimmy Wales.
The Signpost reported that two new trustees were elected in 2019:
- Nataliia Tymkiv, user:antanana (English or Ukrainian)
- Shani Evenstein, user:Esh77 i(English or Hebrew)[12]
Advisory Board
The Foundation also has an Advisory Board, an international network of experts who have agreed to give the foundation meaningful help on a regular basis in many different areas, including law, organizational development, technology, policy, and outreach.[13]
Wikimedia Foundation Media
Logos of Wikimedia projects
Logo of Wikimedia Enterprise
Wikimedia Foundation servers
Wikimedia Foundation revenue, expenses and end-of-year net assets (in US$), 2003–2023Green: revenue (excluding direct donations to the endowment)Red: expenses (including WMF payments into the endowment)Black: net assets (excluding the endowment)
Wikimedia Foundation and chapters finance meeting 2012, Paris
Foundation staff in January 2019
The New Montgomery Street building which housed the headquarters until 2017
One Montgomery Tower has held the headquarters since 2017
Wikimedia Foundation post-SOPA party, 2012
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References
- ↑ "Contact us - Wikimedia Foundation". Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on June 25, 2017. Retrieved 8 June 2017.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Wikimedia Foundation (20 July 2018). "Wikimedia Foundation announces Tanya Capuano as new Trustee, alongside leadership appointments at 14th annual Wikimania". Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on July 20, 2018. Retrieved July 21, 2018.
- ↑ "List of Wikimedia wikis on Meta". Archived from the original on 2012-01-23. Retrieved 2010-11-22.
- ↑ Meyers, Peter (2001-09-20). "Fact-Driven? Collegial? This Site Wants You". New York Times. https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9800E5D6123BF933A1575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink. Retrieved 2007-07-31. "It's kind of surprising that you could just open up a site and let people work," said Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's co-founder and the chief executive of Bomis, a San Diego search engine company that donates the computer resources for the project.".
- ↑ Bergstein, Brian (2007-03-25). "Sanger says he co-started Wikipedia". ABC News (Associated Press). http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=2980046. Retrieved 2007-07-31. "The nascent Web encyclopedia Citizendium springs from Larry Sanger, a philosophy Ph.D. who counts himself as a co-founder of Wikipedia, the site he now hopes to usurp. The claim doesn't seem particularly controversial — Sanger has long been cited as a co-founder. Yet the other founder, Jimmy Wales, isn't happy about it.".
- ↑ Chozick, Amy (27 June 2013). Jimmy Wales is Not an Internet Billionaire. https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/magazine/jimmy-wales-is-not-an-internet-billionaire.html. Retrieved 2019-07-05.
- ↑ Cbrown1023. "Board of Trustees". Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on August 19, 2017. Retrieved July 22, 2015.
- ↑ "Wikipedia". Britannica. Retrieved 2023-06-09.
- ↑ Reed, Betsy. "Welcome to Wikidata! Now what?". The Guardian. Retrieved 2023-06-09.
- ↑ Sutherland, Joe. Emmanuel Engelhart, Inventor of Kiwix: the Offline Wikipedia Browser. In: Wikimedia Blog. 12 September 2014. Accessed on 26 November 2014.
- ↑ Barrett, Daniel J. (October 2008). MediaWiki. O'Reilly Media. ISBN 978-0-596-51979-7. Retrieved April 23, 2010.
- ↑ "Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-06-30/Op-Ed". Archived from the original on 2019-06-30. Retrieved 2019-07-16.
- ↑ "Advisory Board". Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on 2018-01-31. Retrieved 2009-10-07.
Other websites
- Lua error in Module:Official_website at line 90: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value).
- Governance wiki