Wikimedia Foundation
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[edit] About the Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation 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 Board of Trustees. It has about 10 paid staff members but that number is growing. Since January 2007, the Wikimedia Foundation has its office in San Francisco, USA. Its former headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida was closed on January 31, 2007. Official information about the Foundation may be found at the Foundation website: wikimediafoundation.org.
[edit] Our Organigramme
[edit] Board of trustees
The Wikimedia Board of Trustees manages the nonprofit and supervise the disposition and solicitation of nonprofit donations. The Board of Trustees is the ultimate corporate authority in the Wikimedia Foundation Inc., and has the power to direct the activities of the foundation. The Board consists of seven directors.
The bylaws of Wikimedia Foundation Inc. have been posted on the Foundation's main web site: bylaws.pdf (on-wiki version). A Wikimedia board must exist, by law, to manage the nonprofit and supervise the disposition and solicitation of nonprofit donations.
The current Board members are:
- Florence Nibart-Devouard, Chair (term until June 2008)
- Jimmy Wales, Chairman Emeritus (term until December 2008)
- Jan-Bart de Vreede, Vice-chair (term until December 2008)
- Domas Mituzas, Executive Secretary (term until June 2008)
- Stuart West, Treasurer (term until December 2008)
- Kat Walsh (term until July 2009)
- Frieda Brioschi (term until July 2009)
- Michael Snow (term until June 2008)
The Board of Trustees are the ultimate corporate authority in the Wikimedia Foundation Inc. (article IV, sec. 1). The Board has the power to direct the activities of the foundation. It also has the to amend the corporate bylaws (article X, sec. 1).
A Wikimedia board manual would assist this board in carrying out their supervisory responsibilities over the various Wikimedia projects.
[edit] Organization
[edit] Meetings
The board regularly has meetings to discuss the various issues listed on the Board agenda. Most board meetings are done on IRC, though a few have taken place in real life. Some meetups are restricted to board trustees, others may welcome editors as needed (such as one or more officers) or groups (such as entire board of local chapters) or be entirely open to anyone. This is mentioned on the board agenda where future meetups are announced.
Notes of meetup (and sometimes full logs of discussion) may be found on Wikimedia Board meetings.
[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 access is only granted by board members to trusted members of the community. We try to translate pages in several languages. Feedback about this website may be offered on the Meta-Wiki at the Wikimedia site feedback page.
- internal-l is a non public mailing list, with access restricted to board members and officers.
- private-l is another private mailing list may also be used to discuss technical issues among the Foundation.
Channels of communication to be added (OTRS, Quarto).
[edit] What do we spend money on
- For a more detailed explanation of this section, please see Budget.
One of the main expenses for the Foundation is hardware. This includes software and servers for the clusters in Amsterdam, Florida and Seoul.
- For the description of the hardware that powers Wikimedia, please see Wikimedia servers.
- Frequently updated status of this hardware is available at the separate wiki where the developers often communicate and log work.
We already own some of our active and secondary/tangentially-related domain names, while others are still free or already owned.
[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 is a website about the Wikimedia Foundation's projects and coordination.
[edit] Other Wikimedia Projects
| Wikipedia | An encyclopedia containing more than 3 million articles in over 100 languages. |
|---|---|
| Wikimedia Commons | A repository of images, sounds, videos and, generally media, common to all Wikimedia projects, containing more than 1,000,000 files. |
| Wikibooks | A collection of free educational textbooks and learning materials. |
| Wiktionary | A dictionary cataloging meanings, synonyms, etymologies and translations. |
| Wikinews | A news source containing reporting by citizen journalists from many countries. |
| Wikisource | A project to provide and translate free source documents, such as public domain books. |
| Wikiquote | A collection of quotations structured in numerous ways. |
| Wikispecies | A directory of species data on animalia, plantae, fungi, bacteria, archaea, protista and all other forms of life. |
| Wikiversity | A free learning environment for the study of human knowledge. |
[edit] Some 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.
[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 Jimbo announced the creation of the Wikimedia Foundation which will serve as the parent, non-profit, organization of Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, and future wiki/FDL projects we add 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 Moeller, 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 approached. 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.
