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.[7]
 | |
| Abbreviation | WMF |
|---|---|
| Founded | June 20, 2003 St. Petersburg, Florida, U.S. |
| Founder | Jimmy Wales |
| Type | 501(c)(3), charitable organization |
Tax ID no. | 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 | María Sefidari (Chair of the board)[3] Katherine Maher (Executive director) |
Revenue | |
| Expenses |
|
| Endowment (2019) | US $35 million[5] |
Employees | ~301 staff/contractors (as of August 8, 2018[update])[6] |
Volunteers | Wikimedia community |
| Website | WikimediaFoundation.org |
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[8][9] 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.[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]
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.[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 shared collection of free images, videos, and sounds. Things there can be used by 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.[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.
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)[16]
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.[17]
References
Other websites
