Wikimedia Foundation
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Contents |
[edit] About the Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) is a non-profit organization registered in the USA, hosting websites known as the "Wikimedia projects", including Wikipedia and Wikinews, as well as this website, Meta-Wiki. The Wikimedia Foundation is governed by a Board of Trustees. Since January 2008, the Wikimedia Foundation has its office in San Francisco, USA. Its former headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida was closed on January 31, 2008. Official information about the Foundation may be found at the Foundation website: wikimediafoundation.org.
[edit] Board of trustees
The Wikimedia Board of Trustees manages the foundation and supervises the disposition and solicitation of donations. The Board is the ultimate corporate authority for the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (article IV, sec. 1 of the Wikimedia Foundation bylaws) and currently consists of ten Trustees:
- Ting Chen, Chair (term until July 2013)
- Jan-Bart de Vreede, Vice Chair (term until December 2013)
- Stu West, Treasurer (term until December 2013)
- Jimmy Wales, Founder (term until December 2013)
- Samuel Klein (term until July 2013)
- Kat Walsh, Chair (term until July 2013)
- Alice Wiegand (term until July 2014)
- Patricio Lorente (term until July 2014)
- Bishakha Datta (term until December 2014)
See also the history of the Board of Trustees and a chart illustrating Board seats over time. The Board was substantially restructured in April 2008. If you are not familiar with these changes yet, please review the following pages:
- Board Restructure announcement by Vice-Chair Jan-Bart de Vreede
- Board Restructure Questions and Answers
- Board Restructure diagram
The Wikimedia board manual provides an overview of the role of the Board and its duties. The Foundation wiki holds lists of its past and upcoming meetings (with minutes), and its resolutions.
[edit] Organization
[edit] Channels of discussion
The Wikimedia Foundation is managed thanks to the use of:
- Meta-Wiki for discussion and organisation of all public issues. This wiki is entirely public and editable by everyone and is also multilingual.
- wikimediafoundation.org is the official website of the Foundation. This wiki is entirely public, but editing access is only granted to trusted members of the community. We try to translate pages in several languages. Feedback about this website may be offered here on Meta-Wiki at the Foundation wiki feedback page.
- wikimedia-l is a public mailing list for the community to discuss topics related to the Foundation and its projects.
- internal-l is a non public mailing list, with access restricted to board members and officers.
- private-l is another private mailing list that was also used to discuss technical issues among the Foundation.
- OTRS is a ticketing system that is used by Wikimedia Foundation staff and volunteers to handle emails from the public.
[edit] What do we spend money on
See our annual reports, monthly reports and financial reports.
[edit] Where does the money come from
The Wikimedia Foundation is operated and run using monies raised with fundraising and other donations. For more information, please see the donations page.
[edit] Local chapters
Local chapters are country-based independent Wikimedia user associations. Visit the Wikimedia chapters page for more information about the existing chapters. If you wish to start a chapter or are looking for more information about chapters, you may want to contact the Chapters committee.
[edit] Wikimedia coordination and projects
[edit] Project coordination
Wikimedia Meta-Wiki (this wiki) is a website about the Wikimedia Foundation's projects and coordination.
[edit] Main Wikimedia projects
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Wikipedia Free encyclopedia |
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Wiktionary Dictionary and thesaurus |
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Wikinews Free content news source |
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Wikibooks Free textbooks and manuals |
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Wikiquote Collection of quotations |
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Wikisource Free source documents |
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Wikiversity Free learning tools |
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Wikivoyage Free travel guide |
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Wikispecies Directory of species |
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Commons Shared media repository |
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Wikidata Free knowledge base |
[edit] Some project history
- January 12, 2001: Wikipedia launched at Wikipedia.com, separate from Nupedia.
- December 12, 2002: Wiktionary was brought online.
- June 27, 2003: Wikiquote was started on wo.wikipedia, the Wolof Wikipedia.
- July 10, 2003: Wikiquote moves to quote.wikipedia.org and later got its own domain name (wikiquote.org).
- July 10, 2003: The Wikibooks project got its own domain name at textbook.wikipedia.org, later moving to wikibooks.org. See Wikimedia News.
- November 24, 2003: Project Sourceberg (now Wikisource) was officially launched as sources.wikipedia.org. Before that, it was located on ps.wikipedia.org, the Pashto Wikipedia. On December 6, 2003, a vote was held on changing the project's name, and it was renamed to "Wikisource".
- September 5, 2004: After launching in August 2004, Wikispecies was discussed by the board. It was officially merged to a sister project on September 14, 2004.
- September 7, 2004: The Wikimedia Commons was launched.
- December 3, 2004: After a brief demonstration phase in November, the English beta version of Wikinews became operational. Wikinews is meant to be a free content news source which allows anybody to report news on a wide variety of subjects.
- April 2005: 501(c)(3) non-profit status granted by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service with the NTEE Code: B60 (Adult, Continuing Education).
- November 2005: Wikimedia awarded membership in the World Technology Network.
- June 2, 2006: The Wikimedia Incubator was launched.
- August 15, 2006: Wikiversity's beta phase officially began (English Wikiversity).
- 30 October, 2012: Wikidata was launched, the first new Wikimedia project since 2006.
- November 10, 2012: Wikivoyage moved to Wikimedia servers as a beta project, after a discussion on hosting a travel guide project. It was fully launched on January 15, 2013. You can see the Wikipedia article for more information on its pre-WMF days.
[edit] History
The early history of Wikipedia was characterized by much chaos and well-meaning strangeness. Wikipedia Governance was conducted, effectively, by Jimmy Wales (Jimbo) alone, with the assistance of mailing list participants.
The broader mandate of the expanding projects being considered, led to a suggestion in a wikien-l message by Sheldon Rampton:
- I think we should go further still and shoot for the ultimate goal of creating "Wikimedia." That's media with an "m." It would use Wiki-style rules to enable public participation in the creation and editing of all kinds of media: encyclopedias and other reference works, current news, books, fiction, music, video etc. Like current broadcast media, it would have differentiated "channels" and "programs," each with self-selecting audiences. Unlike current media, however, the audience would also be actively involved in creating its own programming, instead of merely passively watching it.
The "wikimedia.org" domain name was purchased by mav in waiting for a Wikipedia/Wikimedia non-profit to come into existence to own it.
On June 20, 2003, Jimmy Wales - who had been operating Wikipedia under the aegis of his company Bomis - announced the creation of the Wikimedia Foundation which was to serve as the parent, non-profit, organization of Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, and other freely licensed wiki projects subsequently addded to the "Wikimedia family". See also the English Wikipedia article on Wikimedia: en:Wikimedia Foundation.
The first board of trustees was composed of 5 people, Jimmy Wales, Tim Shell, Michael Davis, Angela Beesley and Florence Devouard. In 2006, Tim and Angela left the board, whilst Erik Möller, Jan-Bart de Vreede, Kat Walsh and Oscar van Dillen joined it. In October, Florence Devouard became the chair of the board, in replacement of Jimmy Wales. Governance, originally pretty much relying on Jimbo, evolved over the years toward a more community based approach. The first employees joined the organization in 2005, Danny Wool and Brion Vibber.
The organization took a new turn in summer 2007, when Sue Gardner was hired to serve as interim ED. At that point, the staff is made of about 10 people, most in Florida's office and others located in UK, Germany and Netherlands. Most of the committees set up in January 2006 are at this point inactive and abandoned.
