Wikimedia Foundation

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

Logo of the Wikimedia Foundation,
designed by Wikipedia user "Neolux"
Type Not-for-profit corporation
Founded June 20, 2003
Headquarters St. Petersburg, Florida, US
Key people Florence Nibart-Devouard, Chair of the Board
Jimmy Wales, Chairman Emeritus
Erik Möller, Executive Secretary
Michael E. Davis, Treasurer
Tim Shell, Vice-Chair[1]
Kat Walsh, Board member[2]
Oscar van Dillen, Board member[3]
Jan-Bart de Vreede, Board member (effective December 15)[4]
Brad Patrick, Counsel[5]
Danny Wool, Assistant
Brion Vibber, Chief Technical Officer
Industry Internet
Products Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks (including Wikijunior and  Wikiversity), Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies, Wikinews, and  Meta-Wiki
Revenue non-profit
Employees 5 paid employees
Website wikimediafoundation.org
Meta has a page about this at:

The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is  the parent organization of the Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks (including Wikijunior), Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, Wikispecies, Wikinews, Wikiversity, and  Meta-Wiki collaborative projects. it  is a not-for-profit corporation based in St. Petersburg, Florida, USA, and  organized under the laws of the state of Florida. Its existence was officially announced by 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

[edit] 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.

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, Internet access, or  even clean drinking water. All proceeds from donations, as with all proceeds from all Foundation fundraisers, are  fully dedicated to that charitable purpose.

[ and  growth">edit] 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.[6] 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.

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.[7] James Forrester was subsequently appointed to the position.

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On June 16, 2006, Brad Patrick, theretofore a practicing attorney engaged in pro bono work with the Foundation, 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[8].

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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.[9] 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.[10] 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.

[edit] 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.[11] 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) as well as bookkeeper Carolyn Doran.[12]

[ and  projects">edit] Wikimedia coordination and  projects

[edit] 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).

[edit] Project coordination

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

[edit] Recent project history

[edit] Board of Directors


[edit] References

  1. ^ Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, last modified October 27, 2006
  2. ^ Board resolution, December 8, 2006
  3. ^ Board resolution, December 8, 2006
  4. ^ Board resolution, December 8, 2006
  5. ^ Wikimedia Foundation Current Staff, last modified October 2, 2006.
  6. ^ Wikipedia English mailing list message, March 2003.
  7. ^ Wikimedia Foundation mailing list message, August 2005.
  8. ^ Wikimedia Foundation press release
  9. ^ Wikimedia Foundation mailing list message, July 2006
  10. ^ Wikimedia Foundation mailing list message
  11. ^ Jimmy Wales. (2006-10-04). Charlie Rose (46:22) (internet video). [TV-Series]. Google Video: Charlie Rose. Retrieved on 2006-12-08.
  12. ^ Current staff from the Wikimedia Foundation. The Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved on 2006-12-08.

[edit] External links

Wikinews
Wikinews has news related to:
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:


Projects of the Wikimedia Foundation
Wikibooks (Wikijunior) • Wikiversity • Wikimedia Commons • Wiktionary • Wikinews • Wikipedia • Wikiquote • Wikisource • Wikispecies • Meta-Wiki • Wikimedia Incubator
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../w/i/k/Wikimedia_Foundation_83d9.html"

STATIC WIKIPEDIA JUNE 2008 on wikipedia2006.classicistranieri.com

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