Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

Logo of the Wikimedia Foundation
Type	501(c)(3) charitable organization
Founded	St. Petersburg, Florida, United States June 20, 2003 (2003-06-20)
Location	San Francisco, California, United States / Los Angeles, California (registered Agent)
Key people	Ting Chen, Chair of the Board Jimmy Wales, Chairman Emeritus[1] Sue Gardner, Executive Director
Area served	Worldwide
Focus	Free, open content, wiki-based internet projects
Method	Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies, Wikinews, Wikiversity, Wikimedia Incubator and Meta-Wiki
Revenue	US$10,632,254 (July – December 2009)[2] (From donations)
Volunteers	350,000 (2005)[3]
Employees	75 (as of July 2011)[4]
Website	wikimediafoundation.org

Inside Wikimedia video

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an American non-profit charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States. It is organized under the laws of the state of Florida, where it was initially based. It operates several online collaborative wiki projects including Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies, Wikinews, Wikiversity, Wikimedia Incubator, Meta-Wiki and owns the now-defunct Nupedia. Its flagship project, Wikipedia, ranks in the top-ten most-visited websites worldwide.^[5] The creation of the foundation was officially announced on June 20, 2003, by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales,^[6] who had been operating Wikipedia under the aegis of his company Bomis.^[7]

Goal[link]

The Wikimedia Foundation falls under section 501(c)(3) of the US Internal Revenue Code as a public charity. Its National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE) code is C60 (Adult, Continuing Education).^[8][9]The foundation's by-laws declare a statement of purpose of collecting and developing educational content and to disseminate it effectively and globally.^[10]

The Wikimedia Foundation's stated goal is to develop and maintain open content, wiki-based projects and to provide the full contents of those projects to the public free of charge.^[11] This is possible thanks to its Terms of Use (updated and approved on June 2009, to adopt CC-BY-SA license).

History and growth[link]

File:WMF StrategicPlan2011 spreads.pdf

Jimmy Wales, Founder of the Wikimedia Foundation, in December 2008

File:Beyondencyclopediawikimania2010-100714133959-phpapp02.pdf

The Wikimedia Foundation was created from Wikipedia and Nupedia on June 20, 2003.^[12] It applied to the United States Patent and Trademark Office to trademark Wikipedia on September 17, 2004. The mark was granted registration status on January 10, 2006. Trademark protection was accorded by Japan on December 16, 2004, and in the European Union on January 20, 2005. Technically a service mark, the scope of the mark is for: "Provision of information in the field of general encyclopedic knowledge via the Internet."^{[citation needed]} There are plans to license the use of the Wikipedia trademark for some products, such as books or DVDs.^[13]

The name "Wikimedia" was coined by American author Sheldon Rampton in a post to the English mailing list in March 2003.^[14]

With the foundation's announcement, Wales also transferred ownership of all Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Nupedia domain names to Wikimedia along with the copyrights for all materials related to these projects that were created by Bomis employees or Wales himself. The computer equipment used to run all the Wikimedia projects was also donated by Wales to the foundation, which also acquired the domain names "wikimedia.org" and "wikimediafoundation.org".

In April 2005, the US Internal Revenue Service approved the foundation as an educational foundation in the category "Adult, Continuing Education", meaning all contributions to the foundation are tax-deductible for U.S. federal income tax purposes.

On December 11, 2006, the foundation's board noted that the corporation could not become the membership organization initially planned but never implemented due to an inability to meet the registration requirements of Florida Statute. Accordingly, the bylaws were amended to remove all reference to membership rights and activities. The decision to change the bylaws was passed by the board unanimously.^[15]

On September 25, 2007, the foundation's board gave notice that the operations would be moving to the San Francisco Bay Area. Major considerations cited for choosing San Francisco were proximity to like-minded organizations and potential partners as well as cheaper and more convenient international travel than is available from St. Petersburg, Florida.^[16][17][18]

The one billionth edit to a Wikimedia project took place on April 16, 2010.^[19]

Original Board of Trustees[link]

• In January 2004, Jimmy Wales appointed his business partners Tim Shell and Michael E. Davis to the foundation's board. In June 2004, an election was held for two user representative board members. Following one month of campaigning and two weeks of online voting, Angela Beesley and Florence Nibart-Devouard were elected to join the board. In late 2004, Wales and Beesley launched a startup company, Wikia, affiliated with neither Wikimedia nor Bomis, except for their presence as principals/trustees. In July 2005, Beesley and Nibart-Devouard were re-elected to the board.

• On July 1, 2006, Beesley resigned from the board effective upon election of her successor, expressing concern about "certain events and tendencies that have arisen within the organization since the start of this year," but stating her intent to continue to participate in the Wikimedia projects, and in the formation of an Australian chapter. A special election was held in September to finish Beesley's term, ending with the mid-2007 election. The election was won by Erik Möller.

• In October 2006, Nibart-Devouard replaced Wales as chair of the Foundation. On December 8, 2006, the board expanded to seven people with the appointments of Kat Walsh and Oscar van Dillen. Effective December 15, 2006, Jan-Bart de Vreede was appointed to replace Shell.

• In the June 2007 election, Möller and Walsh were reelected; van Dillen, who ran for re-election, was narrowly defeated by Frieda Brioschi.

• Davis left the board in November 2007. Nibart-Devouard's elected term expires in June 2008. The appointed terms for Wales and de Vreede expired in December 2008. Brioschi's and Walsh's elected terms expired in June 2009.

• In December 2007, Möller resigned from the Board of Trustees, and was hired as the foundation's deputy director by the executive director.

• In February 2008, Florence Devouard announced the addition of two new board members: Michael Snow, an American lawyer and chair of the Communication Committee; and Domas Mituzas, a Lithuanian computer software engineer, MySQL employee, and longtime member of the core tech team.^[20]

• In April 2008, the board announced a restructuring of its membership, increasing the number of board positions to 10 overall, as follows:
  • Three community-elected seats
  • Two seats to be selected by the chapters
  • One board-appointed 'community founder' seat, to be occupied by Jimmy Wales
  • Four board-appointed 'specific expertise' seats^[21]

• In the June 2008 board election, Ting Chen was elected for a one-year term, then in September Frieda Brioschi resigned to be elected at the board of Wikimedia Italia.

• In the August 2009 board election, Ting Chen was re-elected, while Kat Walsh and Samuel Klein were elected, effective until July 2011.

• In the July 2010 board election, Michael Snow was replaced as chair of the board, although he retains his place on the Advisory Board.

• In the June 2011 board election, Ting Chen, Kat Walsh and Samuel Klein were re-elected.

Volunteer committees and positions[link]

In April 2009, the Wikimedia Foundation conducted a Wikipedia usability study questioning users about the editing mechanism.^[22]

In 2004, the foundation appointed Tim Starling as developer liaison to help improve the MediaWiki software, Daniel Mayer as chief financial officer (finance, budgeting and coordination of fund drives), and Erik Möller as content partnership coordinator.

In May 2005, the foundation announced the appointment of seven people to official positions:^[23]

• Brion Vibber as chief technical officer (Vibber was also an employee of the Foundation, with other duties)
• Domas Mituzas as hardware officer
• Jens Frank as developer liaison
• Möller as chief research officer
• Danny Wool as grants coordinator
• Elisabeth Bauer as press officer
• Jean-Baptiste Soufron as lead legal coordinator

In January 2006, the foundation created several committees, including the Communication Committee, in an attempt to further organize activities essentially handled by volunteers at that time.^[24] Starling resigned that month to spend more time on his PhD program.

Employees[link]

The Summer of Research 2011 team working at Wikimedia Foundation's San Francisco headquarters

The foundation's functions were, for the first few years, executed almost entirely by volunteers. In 2005, it had only two employees, Danny Wool, a coordinator, and Brion Vibber, a software manager. Though the number of employees has grown, the foundation's staff is still very small, and the bulk of foundation work continues to be done by volunteers.

As of October 4, 2006, the foundation had five paid employees:^[25] two programmers, an administrative assistant, a coordinator handling fundraising and grants, and an interim executive director,^[26] Brad Patrick, previously the foundation's general counsel. Patrick ceased his activity as interim director in January 2007, and then resigned from his position as legal counsel, effective April 1, 2007. He was replaced by Mike Godwin, who served as general counsel and legal coordinator from July 2007^[27] until 2010.

In January 2007, Carolyn Doran was named chief operating officer and Sandy Ordonez joined as head of communications.^[28] Doran began working as a part-time bookkeeper in 2006 after being sent by a temporary agency. Doran later left the foundation in July 2007, and Sue Gardner was hired as consultant and special advisor (later CEO). Some months after Doran's departure, it was determined^[29] that Doran was a convicted felon, with a DUI arrest during her tenure at the foundation and a substantial criminal history, including shooting her boyfriend and complicity in credit card forgery.^[30] Her departure from the organization was cited as one of the reasons the foundation took about seven months to release its fiscal 2007 financial audit.^[31]

Danny Wool, officially the grant coordinator but also largely involved in fundraising and business development, resigned in March 2007. In February 2007, the foundation added a new position, chapters coordinator, and hired Delphine Ménard,^[32] who had been occupying the position as a volunteer since August 2005. Cary Bass was hired in March 2007 in the position of volunteer coordinator. In May 2007, Vishal Patel was hired to assist in business development.^[33] Oleta McHenry was brought in as accountant in May 2007, through a temporary placement agency and made the official fulltime accountant in August 2007. In January 2008, the foundation appointed three new staff: Veronique Kessler as the new chief financial and operating officer, Kul Wadhwa to replace Vishal Patel as head of business development, and Jay Walsh as head of communications.

In June 2008, the foundation announced two staff additions in fundraising: Rebecca Handler as major gifts officer and Rand Montoya as head of community giving.^[34] Soon afterward, Sara Crouse was hired as head of partnerships and foundation relations.^[35] In fall 2008, the foundation hired three software developers: Tomasz Finc, Ariel Glenn, and Trevor Parscal.^[36]

In May 2011, the foundation had 65 employees. A list of Wikimedia Foundation staff can be found at the Wikimedia Foundation's staff page.

Boards[link]

Board of Trustees[link]

Board members at Wikimania 2009 in Buenos Aires

These are the members of the Board of Trustees and the expiry of their terms, as of October 2011^[update]:^[37]

• Ting Chen, chair (July 2013)
• Jan-Bart de Vreede, vice-chair (December 2012)
• Phoebe Ayers, executive secretary (July 2012, appointed by Wikimedia Chapters^[38])
• Stu West, treasurer (December 2012)
• Bishakha Datta (December 2012)
• Matt Halprin (December 2012)
• Samuel Klein (July 2013)
• Arne Klempert (July 2012, appointed by Wikimedia Chapters^[37])
• Jimmy Wales (December 2012)
• Kat Walsh (July 2013)

Advisory board[link]

The Advisory Board is 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.^[39] As of August 2010^[update], the members are:

Projects, initiatives and chapters[link]

Projects[link]

The Wikimedia projects logo family

In addition to the multilingual general encyclopedia Wikipedia, the foundation manages a multi-language dictionary and thesaurus named Wiktionary, an encyclopedia of quotations named Wikiquote, a repository of source texts in any language named Wikisource, a collection of e-book texts for students (such as textbooks and annotated public domain books) named Wikibooks, and a collection of educational materials and activities named Wikiversity. Wikijunior is a subproject of Wikibooks that specializes in books for children.

The launch dates shown below are when official domains were established for the projects and/or beta versions were launched; preliminary test versions at other domains are not considered.

Wikimania[link]

This section requires expansion.

Each year, Wikimedia organizes the event Wikimania, a conference for users of the Wikimedia Foundation projects. It was first organized in Frankfurt (Germany), 2005.

Local chapters[link]

(dark blue) are existing chapters. (dark turquoise) indicates a chapter has been board approved but not yet founded. (green) indicates a chapter is in the planning stages. (light blue) indicates a chapter in discussion.

Wikimedia projects have an international scope. To continue this success on an organizational level, Wikimedia is building an international network of associated organizations.

Local chapters are self-dependent organizations, coordinated by a Chapters Committee (ChapCom), that share the goals of the Wikimedia Foundation and support them within a specified geographical region, usually based on physical boundaries. They support the foundation, the Wikimedia community and Wikimedia projects in different ways—by collecting donations, organizing local events and projects and spreading the word of Wikimedia, free content and Wiki culture. They also provide the community and potential partners with a point of contact capable of fulfilling specific local needs.

Local chapters are self-dependent associations with no legal control of nor responsibility for the websites of the Wikimedia Foundation and vice versa.

Area	Title	URL	Since
Argentina	Wikimedia Argentina	wikimedia.org.ar	02007-09-01September 1, 2007
Australia	Wikimedia Australia	wikimedia.org.au	02008-03-01March 1, 2008
Austria	Wikimedia Österreich	wikimedia.at	02008-02-26February 26, 2008
Bangladesh	Wikimedia Bangladesh	bd.wikimedia.org	02011-10-03October 3, 2011
Canada	Wikimedia Canada	wikimedia.ca	02011-05-24May 24, 2011
Chile	Wikimedia Chile	wikimedia.cl	02011-07-16July 16, 2011
Czech Republic	Wikimedia Česká republika	wikimedia.cz	02008-03-06March 6, 2008
Denmark	Wikimedia Danmark	wikimedia.dk	02009-07-03July 3, 2009
Estonia	Wikimedia Eesti	et.wikimedia.org	02010-08-31August 31, 2010
Finland	Wikimedia Suomi	fi.wikimedia.org	02009-09-21September 21, 2009
France	Wikimédia France	wikimedia.fr	02004-10-23October 23, 2004
Germany	Wikimedia Deutschland	wikimedia.de	02004-06-13June 13, 2004
Hong Kong	香港維基媒體協會	wikimedia.hk	02008-03-01March 1, 2008
Hungary	Wikimédia Magyarország	wikimedia.hu	02008-09-27September 27, 2008
India	Wikimedia India	wikimedia.in	02011-01-03January 3, 2011
Indonesia	Wikimedia Indonesia	wikimedia.or.id	02008-10-07October 7, 2008
Israel	Wikimedia Israel	wikimedia.org.il	02007-06-26June 26, 2007
Italy	Wikimedia Italia	wikimedia.it	02005-06-17June 17, 2005
Macau	澳門維基媒體協會	wikimedia.org.mo	02011-04-24April 24, 2011
Macedonia	Викимедија Македонија	mk.wikimedia.org	02009-09-21September 21, 2009
Mexico	Wikimedia México	mx.wikimedia.org	02011-08-03August 3, 2011
Netherlands	Wikimedia Nederland	nl.wikimedia.org	02006-03-27March 27, 2006
Norway	Wikimedia Norge	no.wikimedia.org	02007-06-23June 23, 2007
Philippines	Wikimedia Philippines	wikimedia.org.ph	02010-04-12April 12, 2010
Poland	Wikimedia Polska	pl.wikimedia.org	02005-11-18November 18, 2005
Portugal	Wikimedia Portugal	wikimedia.pt	02009-07-03July 3, 2009
Russia	Викимедиа РУ	wikimedia.ru	02008-05-24May 24, 2008
Serbia	Wikimedia Serbia	rs.wikimedia.org	02005-12-03December 3, 2005
South Africa	Wikimedia South Africa		02012-02-27February 27, 2012
Spain	Wikimedia España	wikimedia.org.es	02011-02-07February 7, 2011
Sweden	Wikimedia Sverige	se.wikimedia.org	02007-12-11December 11, 2007
Switzerland	Wikimedia CH	wikimedia.ch	02006-05-14May 14, 2006
Taiwan	中華民國維基媒體協會	wikimedia.tw	02007-07-04July 4, 2007
Ukraine	Вікімедіа Україна	wikimedia.org.ua	02009-07-03July 3, 2009
United Kingdom	Wikimedia UK	uk.wikimedia.org	02009-01-12January 12, 2009
Venezuela	Wikimedia Venezuela	wikimedia.org.ve	02011-10-04October 4, 2011
New York City	Wikimedia New York City	nyc.wikimedia.org	02009-01-12January 12, 2009
Washington, D.C.	Wikimedia District of Columbia	wikimediadc.org	02011-09-12September 12, 2011

Strategic Plan[link]

Video explaining the Wikimedia Strategic Plan

In response to the growing size and popularity of Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation announced a Strategic Plan to improving and sustaining the Wikimedia movement. The plan was announced in July 2009, followed by a process of interviews and surveys with people from across the Wikimedia movement, including board of trustees, members of staff and volunteer editors.^[40] After wide consultation, the ongoing plan was intended to be the basis of a five-year plan to further outreach, improve content quality and quality control, and optimising operational areas such as finance and infrastructure.^[41]

Wikipedia Usability Initiative[link]

In December 2008, the Wikimedia Foundation announced a restricted donation of $890,000 grant from the Stanton Foundation, to improve Wikipedia's accessibility.^[42] Later named the Wikipedia Usability Initiative, the grant enabled the Wikimedia Foundation to appoint project-specific staff to the technology department.^[43]

A series of surveys were conducted throughout 2009. This began with a Qualitative Environment Survey on MediaWiki extensions, followed by a Qualitative Statistical Survey focusing on volume of edits, number of new users, and related statistics. In March 2009, a Usability and Experience Study was carried out on new and non editors of the English Wikipedia. The aim was to discover what obstacles participants encountered while editing Wikipedia, ranging from small changes to more complicated syntax such as templates. The study recruited 2500 people for in-person laboratory testing via the Wikipedia website, which was filtered down to ten participants. The results were collated and used by the technology team to improve Wikipedia's usability.^[44] The Usability and Experience Study was followed up by the Usability, Experience and Progress Study in September 2009. This study recruited different new and non editors for in-person trials on a new Wikipedia skin.^[45]

The initiative ultimately culminated in a new Wikipedia skin named Vector, constructed based on the results of the usability studies. This was introduced by default in stages, beginning in May 2010.^[46]

Public Policy Initiative[link]

In May 2010, the Wikimedia Foundation announced the Public Policy Initiative, following a $1.2 million donation by the Stanton Foundation.^[47] The Public Policy Initiative was set up to improve articles relating to public policy-related issues in the United States. Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, stated that "The Stanton Foundation wants to increase people's understanding of public policy-related issues, and supporting quality on Wikipedia is a great way to accomplish that goal".^[47]

As part of the initiative, Wikipedia collaborated with ten universities to help students and professors create and maintain articles relating to public policy.^[48] Volunteer editors of Wikipedia, known as "ambassadors", provided assistance to students and professors. This was either done on campus sites or online.^[49]

Disputes and lawsuits[link]

This section requires expansion.

Many disputes have resulted in litigation^{[50][51][52][53]} while others have not.^[54] Attorney Matt Zimmerman stated, "Without strong liability protection, it would be difficult for Wikipedia to continue to provide a platform for user-created encyclopedia content."^[55]

In December 2011 the Foundation hired Washington, DC lobbyist Dow Lohnes Government Strategies LLC to lobby the United States Congress with regard to "Civil Rights/Civil Liberties" and "Copyright/Patent/Trademark."^[56] At the time of the hire the Foundation was concerned specifically about a bill known as the Stop Online Piracy Act.^[57]

Finances[link]

Interview with Garfield Byrd, Chief of Finance and Administration at the Wikimedia Foundation. Recorded October 7, 2011

Increase in cash

The Wikimedia Foundation relies on public contributions and grants to fund its mission.^[58] It is exempt from federal income tax^[58][59] and from state income tax.^[58][60] It is not a private foundation, and contributions to it qualify as tax-deductible charitable contributions.^[58] The continued technical and economic growth of each of the Wikimedia projects is dependent mostly on donations but the Wikimedia Foundation also increases its revenue by alternative means of funding such as grants, sponsorship, services and brand merchandising. The Wikimedia OAI-PMH update feed service, targeted primarily at search engines and similar bulk analysis and republishing, has been a source of revenue for several years,^[58] but is no longer open to new customers.^[61] DBpedia was given access to this feed free of charge.^[62]

Since the end of fiscal year ended 2004, the Foundation's net assets have grown from $57K ^[63] to $24.2M at the end of fiscal year ended June 30, 2011^[58]. During 2011, the Foundation received public contributions and grants support and revenue from services and brand merchandising totaling $27.5M, with concurrent expenses of $17.9M. The Foundation continued to expand and is in-line with its five-year strategic plan. Therefore, it is expected that revenue and expenses will continue to increase.

Charity Navigator gave Wikimedia three out of four possible stars for fiscal years 2008 and 2009, which improved to four-stars in 2010.^[64]

There are both supporting and opposing arguments regarding whether Wikimedia should switch to an advertising-based revenue model.^[65]

Grants[link]

In March 2008, the Foundation announced a large donation, at the time its largest donation yet: a three-year, $3 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.^[66]

In 2009, the Foundation received four grants – the first grant was a $890,000 Stanton Foundation grant which was aimed to help study and simplify user interface for first-time authors of Wikipedia.^[67] The second was a $300,000 Ford Foundation Grant, given in July 2009, for Wikimedia Commons that aimed to improve the interfaces and workflows for multimedia uploading on Wikimedia websites.^[68] In August 2009, the Foundation received a $500,000 grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.^[69] Lastly, in August 2009, the Omidyar Network issued a potential $2M in "grant" funding to Wikimedia.^[70]

In 2010, Google donated $2M to the Wikimedia Foundation.^[71]. Also in 2010, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation pledged a $800K grant and all was funded during 2011.

In March 2011, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation authorized another $3M grant to continue to develop and maintain the Foundation's mission. The grant is to be funded over three years with the first $1M funded in July 2011 and the remaining $2M is scheduled to be funded in August 2012 and 2013. In August 2011, the Stanton Foundation pledged to fund a $3.6M grant of which $1.8M was funded and the remaining is scheduled to be funded in September 2012. This is the largest grant received by the Wikimedia Foundation to-date ^[72]. Also in 2011, the Foundation received grants from the Brin Wojcicki Foundation^[73] and the Kaphan Foundation in the amounts of $500K and $100K, respectively.

In 2012, the Foundation was awarded a grant of $1.25M from Lisbet Rausing^[73]and Peter Baldwin through Charities Aid Foundation which is to be funded in five equal installments. The first installment of $250K was received in April 2012 and the remaining are to be funded in December 2012-2015.

Technology[link]

The foundation employs technology including hardware and software to run its projects.

Hardware[link]

Overview of system architecture, December 2010. See server layout diagrams on Meta-Wiki.

Wikimedia currently runs on dedicated clusters of Linux servers (mainly Ubuntu),^[74][75] with a few OpenSolaris machines for ZFS. As of December 2009, there were 300 in Florida and 44 in Amsterdam.^[76] Wikipedia employed a single server until 2004, when the server setup was expanded into a distributed multitier architecture. In January 2005, the project ran on 39 dedicated servers in Florida. This configuration included a single master database server running MySQL, multiple slave database servers, 21 web servers running the Apache HTTP Server, and seven Squid cache servers.

Wikipedia receives between 25,000 and 60,000 page requests per second, depending on time of day.^[77] Page requests are first passed to a front-end layer of Squid caching servers.^[78] Further statistics are available based on a publicly available 3-months Wikipedia access trace.^[79] Requests that cannot be served from the Squid cache are sent to load-balancing servers running the Linux Virtual Server software, which in turn pass the request to one of the Apache web servers for page rendering from the database. The web servers deliver pages as requested, performing page rendering for all the language editions of Wikipedia. To increase speed further, rendered pages are cached in a distributed memory cache until invalidated, allowing page rendering to be skipped entirely for most common page accesses.

Software[link]

The operation of Wikimedia depends on MediaWiki, a custom-made, free and open source wiki software platform written in PHP and built upon the MySQL database.^[80] The software incorporates programming features such as a macro language, variables, a transclusion system for templates, and URL redirection. MediaWiki is licensed under the GNU General Public License and it is used by all Wikimedia projects, as well as many other wiki projects. Originally, Wikipedia ran on UseModWiki written in Perl by Clifford Adams (Phase I), which initially required CamelCase for article hyperlinks; the present double bracket style was incorporated later. Starting in January 2002 (Phase II), Wikipedia began running on a PHP wiki engine with a MySQL database; this software was custom-made for Wikipedia by Magnus Manske. The Phase II software was repeatedly modified to accommodate the exponentially increasing demand. In July 2002 (Phase III), Wikipedia shifted to the third-generation software, MediaWiki, originally written by Lee Daniel Crocker. Several MediaWiki extensions are installed^[81] to extend the functionality of MediaWiki software. In April 2005 a Lucene extension^[82][83] was added to MediaWiki's built-in search and Wikipedia switched from MySQL to Lucene for searching. Currently Lucene Search 2.1,^[84] which is written in Java and based on Lucene library 2.3,^[85] is used.

See also[link]

A workers area at the Wikimedia Foundation's San Francisco headquarters

The location of the Wikimedia Foundation's San Francisco headquarters

	Florida portal
	San Francisco Bay Area portal
	Wikipedia portal

• Crowdsourcing
• Wikipedia

References[link]

External links[link]

Find more about Wikimedia Foundation on Wikipedia's sister projects:
	Definitions and translations from Wiktionary
	Images and media from Commons
	Learning resources from Wikiversity
	News stories from Wikinews
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource
	Textbooks from Wikibooks

• Official website
• Official blog
• Wikimedia on freenode, irc.freenode.net
• Wikimedia Foundation mailing list archives

Documents (reports, plans etc.)[link]

• Wikimedia Foundation 2010–11 Annual Plan (published on June 29, 2010)
• Wikimedia Foundation's financial report, wikimediafoundation.org
• The Wikimedia Foundation annual report, wikimediafoundation.org
• The Wikimedia Foundation bylawsPDF (259 KB), wikimediafoundation.org
• Financial statements 2004–2005–2006PDF (90.2 KB), upload.wikimedia.org

Other[link]

• Wikimedia-pedia, knowledge-base, strategy.wikimedia.org
• Public Record for Wikimedia Foundation Inc., Division of Corporations – Florida Department of State, sunbiz.org
• The Wikimedia Foundation profile at Charity Navigator, charitynavigator.org
• Sheldon Rampton's WikiEN-l post, mail.wikipedia.org
• en.Wikizine.org (An independent internal news bulletin for the members of the Wikimedia community)
• Wikimedia Foundation on Twitter

Coordinates: 37°47′13″N 122°23′59″W / 37.786971°N 122.399677°W / 37.786971; -122.399677vep:Vikimedii

Wikipedia:Wikimedia sister projects
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Jimmy Wales
Wales in December 2008
Born	Jimmy Donal Wales (1966-08-07) August 7, 1966 (age 45) Huntsville, Alabama, United States
Residence	London, United Kingdom[1]
Other names	Jimbo
Alma mater	Auburn University University of Alabama Indiana University Bloomington
Occupation	Internet entrepreneur, formerly a Financial trader
Title	President of Wikia, Inc. (2004–present) Chairman of Wikimedia Foundation (June 2003 – October 2006) Chairman Emeritus, Wikimedia Foundation (October 2006–present)
Successor	Florence Devouard
Board member of	Wikimedia Foundation Creative Commons Socialtext Sunlight Foundation (advisory board) MIT Center for Collective Intelligence (advisory board) CiviliNation[2]
Awards	see below
Signature
Website
www.jimmywales.com

Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales ( /ˈdoʊnəl ˈweɪlz/; born August 7, 1966^[3]) is an American Internet entrepreneur best known as a co-founder and promoter of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Wikia company.^[4][5] Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama, United States, where he attended Randolph School, a university-preparatory school, then earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in finance. While in graduate school, he taught at two universities, but left before completing a PhD in order to take a job in finance and later worked as the research director of a Chicago futures and options firm. In 1996, he and two partners founded Bomis, a male-oriented web portal featuring entertainment and adult content. The company would provide the initial funding for the peer-reviewed free encyclopedia Nupedia (2000–2003) and its successor, Wikipedia.

On January 15, 2001, with Larry Sanger and others, Wales launched Wikipedia, a free, open content encyclopedia that enjoyed rapid growth and popularity, and as Wikipedia’s public profile grew, he became the project’s promoter and spokesman. He is historically cited as a co-founder of Wikipedia, though he has disputed the "co-" designation, declaring himself the sole founder.^[6][7] Wales serves on the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit charitable organization he helped establish to operate Wikipedia, holding its board-appointed "community founder" seat. In 2004, he co-founded Wikia, a for-profit wiki-hosting service. His role in creating Wikipedia, which has become the world’s largest encyclopedia, prompted Time magazine to name him in its 2006 list of the world’s most influential people.

Early life and education[link]

Wales was born in Huntsville, Alabama, on August 7, 1966.^[3][8] His father, Jimmy,^[9] worked as a grocery store manager while his mother, Doris, and his grandmother, Erma, ran the House of Learning,^[10] a small private school in the tradition of the one-room schoolhouse, where Wales and his three siblings received their early education.^[10][11] As a child, Wales was a keen reader with an acute intellectual curiosity^[5] and, in what he credits to the influence of the Montessori method on the school’s philosophy of education, "spent lots of hours pouring [sic] over the Britannicas and World Book Encyclopedias." There were only four other children in Wales’ grade, so the school grouped together the first through fourth grade students and the fifth through eighth grade students. As an adult, Wales was sharply critical of the government’s treatment of the school, citing the “constant interference and bureaucracy and very sort of snobby inspectors from the state” as a formative influence on his political philosophy.^[12]

After eighth grade, Wales attended Randolph School,^[13] a university-preparatory school in Huntsville, graduating at sixteen.^[14] Wales said that the school was expensive for his family, but that "education was always a passion in my household... you know, the very traditional approach to knowledge and learning and establishing that as a base for a good life."^[12] He received his bachelor’s degree in finance from Auburn University. Wales then entered the PhD finance program at the University of Alabama before leaving with a master's degree to enter the PhD finance program at Indiana University.^[11][12][14] He taught at both universities during his postgraduate studies but did not write the doctoral dissertation required for a PhD, something he ascribed to boredom.^[11][12]

Career[link]

Chicago Options Associates and Bomis[link]

The staff of Wales’ internet company Bomis photographed in Summer 2000. Wales is third from the left in the back row, with his then-wife Christine.

In 1994, Wales took a job with Chicago Options Associates, a futures and options trading firm in Chicago, Illinois.^[12][15][16] Wales has described himself as having been addicted to the Internet from an early stage and he wrote computer codes during his leisure time. During his studies in Alabama, he had become an obsessive player of Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs)—a type of virtual role-playing game—and thereby experienced the potential of computer networks to foster large-scale collaborative projects.^[14][17] Inspired by the remarkable initial public offering of Netscape in 1995, and having accumulated capital through "speculating on interest-rate and foreign-currency fluctuations",^[10] he decided to leave the realm of financial trading and became an Internet entrepreneur.^[14] In 1996, he and two partners founded Bomis,^[10][18] a web portal featuring user-generated webrings and, for a time, erotic photographs.^[19] Wales described it as a "guy-oriented search engine" with a market similar to that of Maxim magazine;^[11][12][20] The Bomis venture did not ultimately turn out to be successful, however.^[10][11][21]

Nupedia and the origins of Wikipedia[link]

Philosopher Larry Sanger, whom Wales hired as editor-in-chief of Nupedia.

Though Bomis had struggled to make money, it provided Wales with the funding to pursue his greater passion, an online encyclopedia.^[11] While moderating an online discussion group devoted to the philosophy of Objectivism in the early 1990s, Wales had encountered Larry Sanger, a skeptic of the philosophy.^[5] The two had engaged in detailed debate on the subject on Wales' list and then on Sanger's, eventually meeting offline to continue the debate and becoming friends.^[5] Years later, after deciding to pursue his encyclopedia project and seeking a credentialed academic to lead it,^[17] Wales hired Sanger—who at that time was a doctoral student in philosophy at Ohio State University—to be its editor-in-chief, and in March 2000, Nupedia ("the free encyclopedia"), a peer-reviewed, open-content encyclopedia, was launched.^[11][12] The intent behind Nupedia was to have expert-written entries on a variety of topics, and to sell advertising alongside the entries in order to make profit.^[5] The project was characterized by an extensive peer-review process designed to make its articles of a quality comparable to that of professional encyclopedias.^[22]

The idea was to have thousands of volunteers writing articles for an online encyclopedia in all languages. Initially we found ourselves organizing the work in a very top-down, structured, academic, old-fashioned way. It was no fun for the volunteer writers because we had a lot of academic peer review committees who would criticize articles and give feedback. It was like handing in an essay at grad school, and basically intimidating to participate in.

—Jimmy Wales on the Nupedia project New Scientist, January 31, 2007^[23]

In an October 2009 speech, Wales recollects attempting to write a Nupedia article on Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert C. Merton, but being too intimidated to submit his first draft to the prestigious finance professors who were to peer review it, even though he had published a paper on Option Pricing Theory and was comfortable with the subject matter. Wales characterized this as the moment he realized that the Nupedia model was not going to work.^[24]

In January 2001, Sanger was introduced to the concept of a wiki by extreme programming enthusiast Ben Kovitz after explaining to Kovitz the slow pace of growth Nupedia endured as a result of its onerous submission process.^[25] Kovitz suggested that adopting the wiki model would allow editors to contribute simultaneously and incrementally throughout the project, thus breaking Nupedia's bottleneck.^[25] Sanger was excited about the idea, and after he proposed it to Wales, they created the first Nupedia wiki on January 10, 2001.^[25] The wiki was initially intended as a collaborative project for the public to write articles that would then be reviewed for publication by Nupedia's expert volunteers. The majority of Nupedia’s experts, however, wanted nothing to do with this project, fearing that mixing amateur content with professionally researched and edited material would compromise the integrity of Nupedia’s information and damage the credibility of the encyclopedia.^[26] Thus, the wiki project, dubbed "Wikipedia" by Sanger,^[6] went live at a separate domain five days after its creation.^[16][21]

Wikipedia[link]

While Sanger saw Wikipedia primarily as a tool to aid Nupedia development, Wales felt that Wikipedia might have the potential to become the truly collaborative, open effort of knowledge building he dreamed of.^[27][28][29] Initially, neither Sanger nor Wales knew what to expect from the Wikipedia initiative.^[16][17] Wales feared that at worst, it might produce "complete rubbish".^[16] To the surprise of Sanger and Wales, within a few days of launching the number of articles on Wikipedia had outgrown that of Nupedia, and a small collective of editors had formed.^[15][17] Many of the early contributors to the site were familiar with the model of the free culture movement, and, like Wales, many of them sympathized with the open-source movement.^[26] Wales has said that he was initially so worried with the concept of open editing, where anyone can edit the encyclopedia, that he would awake during the night and monitor what was being added.^[30][31] Nonetheless, the cadre of early editors helped create a robust, self-regulating community that has proven conducive to the growth of the project.^[11]

Sanger developed Wikipedia in its early phase and guided the project.^[6][32] The broader idea he ascribes to Wales, remarking in a 2005 memoir for Slashdot that "the idea of an open source, collaborative encyclopedia, open to contribution by ordinary people, was entirely Jimmy's, not mine, and the funding was entirely by Bomis", adding, "the actual development of this encyclopedia was the task he gave me to work on."^[33] Sanger worked on and promoted both the Nupedia and Wikipedia projects until Bomis discontinued funding for his position in February 2002;^[34] Sanger resigned as editor-in-chief of Nupedia and as "chief organizer" of Wikipedia on March 1 of that year.^[35][36] In the early years, Wales had supplied the financial backing for the project,^{[clarification needed][32][37]} and entertained the notion of placing advertisements on Wikipedia before costs were reduced with Sanger's departure and plans for a nonprofit foundation were advanced instead.^[38]

Controversy[link]

Wales has asserted that he is the sole founder of Wikipedia,^[7] and has publicly disputed Sanger’s designation as a co-founder. Sanger and Wales were identified as co-founders at least as early as September 2001 by The New York Times and as founders in Wikipedia's first press release in January 2002.^[39][40] In August of that year, Wales identified himself as "co-founder" of Wikipedia.^[41] Sanger assembled on his personal webpage an assortment of links that appear to confirm the status of Sanger and Wales as co-founders.^[6][42] For example, Sanger and Wales are historically cited or described in early news citations and press releases as co-founders.^[6] Wales was quoted by The Boston Globe as calling Sanger’s claim "preposterous" in February 2006,^[43] and called "the whole debate silly" in an April 2009 interview.^[44]

In late 2005, Wales edited his own biographical entry on the English Wikipedia. Writer Rogers Cadenhead drew attention to logs showing that in his edits to the page, Wales had removed references to Sanger as the co-founder of Wikipedia.^[45][46] Sanger commented that "having seen edits like this, it does seem that Jimmy is attempting to rewrite history. But this is a futile process because in our brave new world of transparent activity and maximum communication, the truth will out."^[20][47] Wales was also observed to have modified references to Bomis in a way that was characterized as downplaying the sexual nature of some of his former company’s products.^[16][20] Though Wales argued that his modifications were solely intended to improve the accuracy of the content,^[20] he apologized for editing his own biography, a practice generally discouraged on Wikipedia.^[20][47]

Role[link]

Wales delivering the keynote speech (“The State of the Wiki”) at Wikimania, the conference for Wikimedia projects, in Buenos Aires in 2009.

In a 2004 interview with Slashdot, Wales outlined his vision for Wikipedia: "Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we're doing."^[48] Although his formal designation is board member and chairman emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wales' social capital within the Wikipedia community has accorded him a status that has been characterized as benevolent dictator, constitutional monarch and spiritual leader.^[49][50][51] He was also the closest the project had to a spokesperson in its early years.^[5] The growth and prominence of Wikipedia made Wales an Internet celebrity^[52]. Although he had never traveled outside North America prior to the site's founding, his participation in the Wikipedia project has seen him flying internationally on a near-constant basis as its public face.^[5][53]

Despite involvement in other projects, Wales has denied intending to reduce his role within Wikipedia, telling The New York Times in 2008 that "Dialing down is not an option for me ... Not to be too dramatic about it, but, 'to create and distribute a free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single person on the planet in their own language,' that's who I am. That's what I am doing. That's my life goal."^[50] In May 2010, the BBC reported that Wales had relinquished many of his technical privileges on Wikimedia Commons (a Wikipedia sister project that hosts much of its multimedia content) after criticism by the project’s volunteer community over what they saw as Wales' hasty and undemocratic approach to deleting sexually explicit images he believed "appeal solely to prurient interests".^[54]

Wikimedia Foundation[link]

Wales appearing as a member of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees at Wikimania 2007.

In mid-2003, Wales set up the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), a non-profit organization founded in St. Petersburg, Florida and later headquartered on the West Coast of the United States, in San Francisco, California.^[55][56] All intellectual property rights and domain names pertaining to Wikipedia were moved to the new foundation,^[57] whose purpose is to establish general policy for the encyclopedia and its sister projects.^[17] Wales has been a member of the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees since it was formed and was its official chairman from 2003 through 2006.^[58] Since 2006 he has been accorded the honorary title of Chairman Emeritus and holds the board-appointed "community founder" seat.^[59] His work for the foundation, including his appearances to promote it at computer and educational conferences, has always been unpaid.^[19] Wales has often joked that donating Wikipedia to the foundation was both the "dumbest and the smartest" thing he had done. On one hand, he estimated that Wikipedia was worth US$3 billion; on the other, he weighed his belief that the donation made its success possible.^{[23][57][60][61]}

Wales' association with the foundation has led to controversy. In March 2008, Wales was accused by former Wikimedia Foundation employee Danny Wool of misusing the foundation's funds for recreational purposes. Wool also stated that Wales had his Wikimedia credit card taken away in part because of his spending habits, a claim Wales denied.^[62] Then-chairperson of the foundation Florence Devouard and former foundation interim Executive Director Brad Patrick denied any wrongdoing by Wales or the foundation, saying that Wales accounted for every expense and that, for items for which he lacked receipts, he paid out of his own pocket; in private, Devouard upbraided Wales for "constantly trying to rewrite the past".^[63] Later in March 2008, it was claimed by Jeffrey Vernon Merkey that Wales had edited Merkey's Wikipedia entry to make it more favorable in return for donations to the Wikimedia Foundation, an allegation Wales dismissed as "nonsense".^[64][65]

Wikia and later pursuits[link]

In 2004, Wales and then-fellow member of the WMF Board of Trustees Angela Beesley founded the for-profit company Wikia.^[15] Wikia is a wiki farm—a collection of individual wikis on different subjects, all hosted on the same website. It hosts some of the largest wikis outside Wikipedia, including Memory Alpha (devoted to Star Trek) and Wookieepedia (Star Wars).^[66] Another service offered by Wikia was Wikia Search, an open source search engine intended to challenge Google and introduce transparency and public dialogue about how it is created into the search engine’s operations,^[67] but the project was abandoned in March 2009.^[68] Wales stepped down as Wikia CEO to be replaced by angel investor Gil Penchina, a former vice president and general manager at eBay, on June 5, 2006.^[69] Penchina declared Wikia to have reached profitability in September 2009.^[70]In addition to his role at Wikia, Wales is a public speaker represented by the Harry Walker Agency.^[71][72] He has also participated in a celebrity endorsement campaign for the Swiss watch maker Maurice Lacroix.^[73]

On November 4, 2011, Wales delivered an hour-long address, at The Sage Gateshead in the United Kingdom, to launch the 2011 Free Thinking Festival on BBC Radio Three.^[74] His speech, which was entitled, "The Future of the Internet", was largely devoted to Wikipedia. Twenty days later, on November 24, Wales appeared on the British topical debate television program Question Time.^[75]