Wikimedia Foundation
 | |
| Abbreviation | WMF |
|---|---|
| Founded | June 20, 2003 |
| Founder | Jimmy Wales |
| Founded at | St. Petersburg, Florida, U.S. |
| Type | 501(c)(3), charitable organization |
| 20-0049703[1] | |
| Focus | Free, open-content, wiki-based Internet projects |
| Location |
|
Area served | Worldwide |
| Products | Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikispecies, Wikinews, Wikiversity, Wikivoyage, MediaWiki |
Membership | Board-only |
Key people |
|
Revenue |
|
The Wikimedia Foundation is an American non-profit foundation. Their main headquarters is located in San Francisco, United States. The Foundation runs many projects with the Wiki idea and MediaWiki software. Wikipedia is the most famous.
Other sites include Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikiversity, Wikimedia Commons,Wikifunctions, Wikidata, Wikivoyage and Meta-Wiki.[7] The Foundation runs other Wikis that are more closely related to the operations of the Foundation itself. They include the Wikimedia Foundation wiki, the MediaWiki wiki, the Test Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Incubator, Bugzilla, and the Wikimania wiki.
History
[change | change source]Founding
[change | change source]The foundation's creation was officially announced by Wikipedia co-founder[8][9] Jimmy Wales, who was running Wikipedia within his company Bomis, on June 20, 2003.
Operation
[change | change source]The foundation gets most of its funds from donations, as it is non-profit. It also looks for grants. Some companies[clarification needed] have helped Wikimedia by giving free computer hardwares and by hosting its 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.
2010s
[change | change source]- In 2013, Sue Gardner was the executive director.[10]
- In 2015, Patricio Lorente was the Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board.[11]
- In 2016, Katherine Maher became the executive director.
- In 2018, María Sefidari is chair of the board.[3]
2020s
[change | change source]- In 2022, Maryana Iskander became Chief Executive Officer, replacing Katherine Maher.
Projects
[change | change source]Content projects
[change | change source]As of 2021,[update] Wikimedia has many content projects. These include:
- Wikipedia: An online encyclopedia.[12]
- 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.[13]
- 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
[change | change source]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.[14]
- MediaWiki: The open-source platform that powers the Wikimedia projects.[15]
- 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.
Boards
[change | change source]Board of Trustees
[change | change source]
The Board of Trustees in charge of the affairs of the Foundation has 10 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 (English or Hebrew)[16]
Advisory Board
[change | change source]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.[17]
Other websites
[change | change source]
References
[change | change source]- ↑ Archived (PDF) from the original on September 14, 2016. Retrieved 13 December 2016.
- ↑ Archived from the original on June 25, 2017. Retrieved 8 June 2017.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Wikimedia Foundation (20 July 2018). Archived from the original on July 20, 2018. Retrieved July 21, 2018.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Archived (PDF) from the original on March 9, 2021. Retrieved September 29, 2019.
- ↑ Brent, Marc (24 April 2019). Archived from the original on April 25, 2019. Retrieved April 25, 2019.
With their gifts, the Endowment has now increased to more than $35 million and have moved us that much closer to our goal of $100 million.
- ↑ Archived from the original on June 2, 2016. Retrieved August 8, 2018.
- ↑ Archived from the original on 2012-01-23. Retrieved 2010-11-22.
- ↑ Meyers, Peter (2001-09-20). Archived from the original on 2022-05-27. 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). Archived from the original on 2009-02-06. 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). Archived from the original on 2013-06-30. Retrieved 2019-07-05.
- ↑ Archived from the original on August 19, 2017. Retrieved July 22, 2015.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ↑ "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.
- ↑ Archived from the original on 2019-06-30. Retrieved 2019-07-16.
- ↑ the original on 2018-01-31. Retrieved 2009-10-07.