Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation is a 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.[1]
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[2][3] 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 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.
Patricio Lorente is the current Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board.[4]
Contents
The different boards[change | change source]
Board of Trustees[change | change source]
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.
Advisory Board[change | change source]
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.[5]
References[change | change source]
- ↑ List of Wikimedia wikis on Meta
- ↑ Meyers, Peter (2001-09-20). "Fact-Driven? Collegial? This Site Wants You". New York Times. Retrieved 2007-07-31.
It's kind of surprising that you could just open up a site and let people work," said Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's co-founder and the chief executive of Bomis, a San Diego search engine company that donates the computer resources for the project.
Check date values in:|date=(help) - ↑ Bergstein, Brian (2007-03-25). "Sanger says he co-started Wikipedia". ABC News. Associated Press. Retrieved 2007-07-31.
The nascent Web encyclopedia Citizendium springs from Larry Sanger, a philosophy Ph.D. who counts himself as a co-founder of Wikipedia, the site he now hopes to usurp. The claim doesn't seem particularly controversial — Sanger has long been cited as a co-founder. Yet the other founder, Jimmy Wales, isn't happy about it.
Check date values in:|date=(help) - ↑ Cbrown1023. "Board of Trustees". Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved July 22, 2015.
- ↑ "Advisory Board". Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on 2009-09-07. Retrieved 2009-10-07.
