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CONTENTS

  1. Answers.com
  2. Bliki
  3. Blocking of Wikipedia in mainland China
  4. Blog
  5. Bomis
  6. Citizendium
  7. Collaborative editing
  8. Collaborative real-time editor
  9. Collaborative software
  10. Collaborative writing
  11. Comparison of wiki software
  12. Corporate wiki
  13. Creative Commons
  14. Enciclopedia Libre
  15. Encyclopaedia Britannica
  16. Ensemble collaboration
  17. FileReplacement
  18. Free content
  19. GNU Free Documentation License
  20. GNUpedia
  21. History of Wikipedia
  22. International Music Score Library Project
  23. InterWiki
  24. IP address
  25. Italian Wikipedia
  26. Jimmy Wales
  27. John Seigenthaler Sr. Wikipedia biography controversy
  28. Larry Sanger
  29. Lexipedia
  30. List of wikis
  31. List of wiki software
  32. Living Platform
  33. LyricWiki
  34. Nupedia
  35. Open Site
  36. Peer review
  37. Peer-to-peer wiki
  38. Personal wiki
  39. Placeopedia
  40. Reliability of Wikipedia
  41. Semapedia
  42. SourceWatch
  43. Structured wiki
  44. TWiki
  45. Uncyclopedia
  46. Unilang
  47. Wapedia
  48. Wiki
  49. Wikia
  50. Wikibooks
  51. Wikifonia
  52. Wikijunior
  53. Wikileaks
  54. Wikimapia
  55. Wikimedia Commons
  56. Wikimedia Foundation
  57. Wikinews
  58. Wikinfo
  59. Wikipedia
  60. 2006 Wikipedia CD Selection
  61. Wikipedia in popular culture
  62. Wikiquote
  63. Wiki software
  64. Wikisource
  65. Wikispecies
  66. Wikitext
  67. Wikitravel
  68. Wikiversity
  69. WikiWax
  70. Wikiweise
  71. WikiZnanie
  72. Wikocracy
  73. Wiktionary

 

 



WIKIPEDIA, THE FREE ENCYCLOPAEDIA
This article is from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation

All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License 

Wikimedia Foundation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 
For the wiki software used and developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, see MediaWiki.
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

Logo of the Wikimedia Foundation[1]
Type 501(c)(3) charitable organization
Founded June 20, 2003
Headquarters St. Petersburg, Florida, USA
Key people Florence Nibart-Devouard, Chair of the Board
Jimmy Wales, Chairman Emeritus
Erik Möller, Executive Secretary
Michael E. Davis, Treasurer[2]
Kat Walsh, Board member[3]
Oscar van Dillen, Board member[4]
Jan-Bart de Vreede, Board member[5]
Brad Patrick, Counsel[6]
Danny Wool, Assistant
Brion Vibber, Chief Technical Officer
Area served Worldwide
Focus Free, open content, wiki-based internet projects
Method Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks (including Wikijunior), Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies, Wikinews, Wikiversity and Meta-Wiki
Employees 5 paid employees
Website wikimediafoundation.org

The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a non-profit charitable organisation based in St. Petersburg, Florida, USA, and organized under the laws of the state of Florida. It operates several collaborative projects including Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks (including Wikijunior), Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies, Wikinews, Wikiversity, and Meta-Wiki collaborative projects.

Its existence was officially announced by Wikipedia co-founder[7][1][2][3] Jimmy Wales, who was hitherto running Wikipedia within his company Bomis, on June 20, 2003. Its approval by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, by letter in April 2005, as an educational foundation in the category "Adult, Continuing Education" means all contributions to the Wikimedia Foundation are tax deductible for U.S. federal income tax purposes.

Contents

  • 1 Foundation goals
  • 2 Foundation history and growth
    • 2.1 Employees
    • 2.2 Advisory board
  • 3 Wikimedia coordination and projects
    • 3.1 Wikimedia projects
    • 3.2 Project coordination
    • 3.3 Recent project history
  • 4 Board of Trustees
  • 5 Communications committee
    • 5.1 Scope
  • 6 References
  • 7 External links

Foundation goals

The goal of the Wikimedia foundation 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.[8]

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, and a collection of e-book texts for students (such as textbooks and annotated public domain books) named Wikibooks. Wikijunior is a subproject of Wikibooks that specializes in books for children.

The continued growth of each of the Wikimedia projects is dependent mostly on donations but the Wikimedia Foundation tries to increase its revenue by finding alternative means of funding such as grants and sponsorship.

The Wikimedia Foundation is a 501(c)(3) with a vision to bring a free and accurate encyclopedia to every single person on the planet. This includes people who currently do not have electricity, computers, or Internet access. All proceeds from donations, as with all proceeds from all Foundation fundraisers, are fully dedicated to that charitable purpose.

Foundation history and growth

The name "Wikimedia" was coined by Sheldon Rampton in a post to the English Wikipedia's mailing list in March 2003.[9] The name has been criticized for its similarity to the name of Wikipedia and the software it runs on, MediaWiki; this sometimes leads to confusion among people new to the project.

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. The domain names wikimedia.org and wikimediafoundation.org were secured for the Foundation by Wikipedia contributor Daniel Mayer. Wikimedia's bandwidth and power are covered by donations to the project from various companies and individuals.

In January 2004, Jimmy Wales appointed his business partners Tim Shell and Michael Davis to the Board of the Wikimedia Foundation. 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; they were re-elected in July 2005. Wales and Beesley later launched a startup company, Wikia, which is affiliated with neither Wikimedia nor Bomis, though it donates to Wikimedia. Several individuals who worked with Wikia including Brad Patrick and Tim Starling have been subsequently employed by the Foundation.

Later, other official positions were developed: Tim Starling was appointed Developer Liaison to help improve the organisation of the development of the MediaWiki software, and Daniel Mayer was appointed Chief Financial Officer to help keep a budget and coordinate fund drives. Erik Möller had been the Chief Research Officer, but resigned in August 2005 due to differences with the board.[10] James Forrester was subsequently appointed to the position.

Wikinews
Wikinews has news related to:
Brad Patrick

On June 16, 2006, Brad Patrick, theretofore a practicing attorney engaged in some pro bono work with the Foundation starting in the fall of 2005, was named as general counsel and interim executive director; in the latter capacity, Patrick was designated to assist the Board in its search for a permanent executive director[11].

Wikinews
Wikinews has news related to:
Angela Beesley

On July 1, 2006, Angela Beesley resigned from the board effective upon election of her successor, expressing concern about "certain events and tendencies that have arisen within the organisation 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.[12] After her resignation, a special election was held and the winner, Erik Möller, will finish Angela Beesley's term, ending with the ordinary 2007 election.[13] Kat Walsh and Oscar van Dillen were appointed to the Board on December 8, 2006. Jan-Bart de Vreede was appointed to replace Tim Shell from December 15, 2006.

On December 11, 2006 the Wikimedia Foundation board acknowledged that the corporation could not become the membership organisation intially 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.

Employees

The functions of the Wikimedia Foundation are executed almost entirely by volunteers. As of October 4, 2006, the Wikimedia Foundation had 5 paid employees: interim executive director Brad Patrick; two programmers (software manager Brion Vibber in California and server administrator Chad Perrin in Tampa); grants manager Danny Wool; and, "to answer the phones", administrative assistant Barbara Brown.[14] As of December 8, 2006, the Wikimedia Foundation's list of current staff also names three other technical independent contractors (part-time hardware manager Kyle Anderson in Tampa, full-time MediaWiki software developer Tim Starling, and part-time networking coordinator Mark Bergsma). In January 2007 Carolyn Doran was named Chief Operating Officer and Sandy Ordonez came on board as Communications Manager.[15]

Advisory board

  • Angela Beesley
  • Ward Cunningham
  • Heather Ford
  • Melissa Hagemann
  • Danny Hillis
  • Mitch Kapor
  • Joris Komen
  • Rebecca MacKinnon
  • Wayne Mackintosh
  • Benjamin Mako Hill
  • Erin McKean
  • Trevor Neilson
  • Achal Prabhala
  • Jay Rosen
  • Clay Shirky
  • Peter Suber
  • Raoul Weiler
  • Ethan Zuckerman

Wikimedia coordination and projects

Wikimedia projects

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.

Wikipedia
Encyclopedia containing more than 5 million articles in 250 languages (launched 2001-01-15).
Wiktionary
Dictionary cataloging meanings, synonyms, etymologies and translations (launched 2002-12-12).
Wikibooks
Collection of free educational textbooks and learning materials (launched 2003-07-10).
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations structured in numerous ways (launched 2003-07-10).
Wikisource
Project to provide and translate free source documents, such as public domain texts (launched 2003-11-24).
Wikimedia Commons
Repository of images, sounds, videos and general media, containing more than 700,000 files (launched 2004-09-07).
Wikimedia Incubator
Used to test possible new Wikimedia projects and new languages for existing projects.
Wikispecies
Directory of species data on animalia, plantae, fungi, bacteria, archaea, protista and all other forms of life (launched 2004-09-13).
Wikinews
News source containing original reporting by citizen journalists from many countries (launched 2004-12-03).
Wikiversity
Courses, course materials, tests. Announced to go into beta testing, little has been officially decided on its structure (launched 2006-08-15).

Project coordination

Meta-Wiki
Wikimedia project coordination (launched November 2001).

Recent project history

  • 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.

Board of Trustees

  • Jimmy Wales
  • Erik Möller
  • Michael E. Davis
  • Florence Nibart-Devouard
  • Oscar van Dillen
  • Kat Walsh
  • Jan-Bart de Vreede

Communications committee

The Communications committee (ComCom) is one of several committees within the Wikimedia Foundation. It was authorized by a resolution of the Wikimedia:Board of Trustees in January 2006, and its initial members were confirmed in February.

  • Angela Beesley
  • Michael Snow
  • Nicholas Moreau (zanimum)
  • David Gerard
  • sannse
  • mindspillage
  • Walter Vermeir

Scope

The initially published scope of the ComCom was:

  • Coordinating communications with the press, including press releases, interviews, and inquiries.
  • Supporting communication between the Wikimedia Foundation and project communities.
  • Organizing and coordinating publicity and outreach.
  • Supporting and overseeing communication with the general public.
  • Maintaining a Wikimedia style guide.
  • Reporting on core Wikimedia statistics.

References

  1. ^ Logo designed by Wikipedia user "Neolux"
  2. ^ Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, last modified October 27, 2006
  3. ^ Board resolution, December 8, 2006
  4. ^ Board resolution, December 8, 2006
  5. ^ Board resolution, December 8, 2006
  6. ^ Wikimedia Foundation Current Staff, last modified October 2, 2006.
  7. ^ Mehegan, David (February 12, 2006). Bias, sabotage haunt Wikipedia's free world. Business 4. The Boston Globe. Retrieved on 2007-03-19.
  8. ^ Wikimedia mission statement
  9. ^ Wikipedia English mailing list message, March 2003.
  10. ^ Wikimedia Foundation mailing list message, August 2005.
  11. ^ Wikimedia Foundation press release
  12. ^ Wikimedia Foundation mailing list message, July 2006
  13. ^ Wikimedia Foundation mailing list message
  14. ^ Jimmy Wales. Charlie Rose (46:22) (internet video) [TV-Series]. Google Video: Charlie Rose. Retrieved on 2006-12-08.
  15. ^ Current staff from the Wikimedia Foundation. The Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved on 2006-12-08.

External links

Wikinews
Wikinews has news related to:
Wikimedia
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
Wikimedia
  • Wikimedia Foundation website
  • Wikimedia Foundation bylaws (PDF file)
  • Corporate Charter of Wikimedia Foundation Inc. two page TIFF file located on Florida Department of State, Divisions of Corporations web site
  • Public Record for Wikimedia Foundation Inc. from Florida Department of State web site
  • Sheldon Rampton's WikiEN-l post
  • nPost.com interview with "Jimmy Wales, CEO of WikiPedia"
  • 2005 IRS Form 990 for the Wikimedia Foundation


 

Projects of the Wikimedia Foundation
Wikibooks (Wikijunior) • Wikiversity • Wikimedia Commons • Wiktionary • Wikinews • Wikipedia • Wikiquote • Wikisource • Wikispecies


 

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation"

Categories: 2003 establishments | Foundations | Internet companies of the United States | Non-profit organizations | Nonprofit technology | St. Petersburg, Florida | Wiki communities | Wikimedia Foundation

 

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