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The Wikimedia Foundation falls under section 501(c)(3) of the US Internal Revenue Code as a public charity. Its National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE) code is B60 (Adult, Continuing Education).[8][9] The foundation's by-laws declare a statement of purpose of collecting and developing educational content and to disseminate it effectively and globally.[10]
The Wikimedia Foundation's stated goal 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.[11] This is possible thanks to its Terms of Use (updated and approved on June 2009, to adopt CC-BY-SA license).
[ Tags:June 20,Open Content,Wiki,Internal Revenue Code,Public Charity,National Taxonomy Of Exempt Entities,Adult,Continuing Education,Foundation's,Free Of Charge,Cc-by-sa, | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| History and growth |
Jimmy Wales, Founder of the Wikimedia Foundation, in December 2008
The Wikimedia Foundation was created from Wikipedia and Nupedia on June 20, 2003.[12] It applied to the United States Patent and Trademark Office to trademark Wikipedia on September 17, 2004. The mark was granted registration status on January 10, 2006. Trademark protection was accorded by Japan on December 16, 2004, and in the European Union on January 20, 2005. Technically a service mark, the scope of the mark is for: "Provision of information in the field of general encyclopedic knowledge via the Internet."[citation needed] There are plans to license the use of the Wikipedia trademark for some products, such as books or DVDs.[13]
The name "Wikimedia" was coined by American author Sheldon Rampton in a post to the English mailing list in March 2003.[14]
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, which also acquired the domain names "wikimedia.org" and "wikimediafoundation.org".
In April 2005, the US Internal Revenue Service approved (by letter) the foundation as an educational foundation in the category "Adult, Continuing Education", meaning all contributions to the Wikimedia Foundation are tax deductible for U.S. federal income tax purposes.
On December 11, 2006, the Wikimedia Foundation board noted that the corporation could not become the membership organization initially 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.[15]
On September 25, 2007, the Wikimedia Foundation board gave notice that the operations would be moving to the San Francisco Bay Area. Major considerations cited for choosing San Francisco were proximity to like-minded organizations and potential partners as well as cheaper and more convenient international travel than is available from St. Petersburg.[16][17][18]
The one billionth edit to a Wikimedia project took place in April 16, 2010.[19]
[ | Tags:2003,U.s.,Jimmy Wales,Wikipedia,Wiktionary,San Francisco,Florida,Bomis,United States Patent And Trademark Office,Trademark,European Union,Service Mark,Information,Internet,Citation Needed,Coined,Sheldon Rampton,Nupedia,Domain Names,Internal Revenue Service,Tax Deductible,Membership Organization,San Francisco Bay Area, Board of Trustees |
Beyond the Encyclopedia: The Frontiers of Free Knowledge - presentation by Erik Möller about state of Wikimedia Foundation's projects in 2010
In January 2004, Jimmy Wales appointed his business partners Tim Shell and Michael E. 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. In late 2004, Wales and Beesley launched a startup company, Wikia, affiliated with neither Wikimedia nor Bomis, except for their presence as principals/trustees. In July 2005, Beesley and Nibart-Devouard were re-elected to the board.
On July 1, 2006, Beesley resigned from the board effective upon election of her successor, expressing concern about "certain events and tendencies that have arisen within the organization 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. A special election was held in September to finish Beesley's term, ending with the mid-2007 election. The election was won by Erik Möller.
In October 2006, Nibart-Devouard replaced Wales as chair of the Foundation. On December 8, 2006, the board expanded to seven people with the appointments of Kat Walsh and Oscar van Dillen. Effective December 15, 2006, Jan-Bart de Vreede was appointed to replace Shell.
In the June 2007 election, Möller and Walsh were reelected; van Dillen, who ran for re-election, was narrowly edged by Frieda Brioschi.
Davis left the board in November 2007. Nibart-Devouard's elected term expires in June 2008. The appointed terms for Wales and de Vreede expired in December 2008. Brioschi's and Walsh's elected terms expired in June 2009.
In December 2007, Möller resigned from the Board of Trustees, and was hired as the foundation's deputy director by the executive director.
In February 2008, Florence Devouard announced the addition of two new board members: Michael Snow, an American lawyer and chair of the Communication Committee; and Domas Mituzas, a Lithuanian computer software engineer, MySQL employee, and longtime member of the core tech team.[20]
In April 2008, the board announced a restructuring of its membership, increasing the number of board positions to 10 overall, as follows:
Three community-elected seats
Two seats to be selected by the chapters
One board-appointed 'community founder' seat, to be occupied by Jimmy Wales
Four board-appointed 'specific expertise' seats[21]
In the June 2008 board election, Ting Chen was elected for a one-year term, then in September Frieda Brioschi resigned to be elected at the board of Wikimedia Italia.
In the August 2009 board election, Ting Chen (reelected), Kat Walsh and Samuel Klein are elected. Their positions will be effective until July 2011.
In the July 2010 board election, Michael Snow was replaced as chair of the board, although he retains his place on the Advisory Board.
[ | Tags:Ting Chen,Erik Möller,Tim Shell,Michael E. Davis,Angela Beesley,Florence Nibart-devouard,Wikia,Oscar Van Dillen,Jan-bart De Vreede,Wikimedia Italia,Executive Director,Trustees,Michael Snow,Encyclopedia, Volunteer committees and positions |
In April 2009, Wikimedia Foundation conducted Wikipedia usability study questioning users about the editing mechanism[22]
In 2004, the foundation appointed Tim Starling as developer liaison to help improve the MediaWiki software, Daniel Mayer as chief financial officer (finance, budgeting and coordination of fund drives), and Erik Möller as content partnership coordinator.
In May 2005, the foundation announced the appointment of seven people to official positions:[23]
Brion Vibber as chief technical officer (Vibber was also an employee of the Foundation, with other duties)
Domas Mituzas as hardware officer
Jens Frank as developer liaison
Möller as chief research officer
Danny Wool as grants coordinator
Elisabeth Bauer as press officer
Jean-Baptiste Soufron as lead legal coordinator
Möller resigned in August 2005, due to differences with the board, and was replaced by James Forrester. In February 2007, Forrester resigned, and the board appointed Gregory Maxwell to the position, renamed "chief research coordinator".[24]
In January 2006, the foundation created several committees, including the Communication Committee, in an attempt to further organize activities essentially handled by volunteers at that time.[25] Starling resigned that month to spend more time on his PhD program.
[ | Tags:Mediawiki,Chief Financial Officer,Finance,Budgeting, Employees |
The functions of the Wikimedia Foundation were, for the first few years, executed almost entirely by volunteers. In 2005, the foundation had only two employees, Danny Wool, a coordinator, and Brion Vibber, a software manager. Though the number of employees has grown, the foundation's staff is still very small, and the bulk of foundation work continues to be done by volunteers.
Wikimedia Foundation's San Francisco headquarters
As of October 4, 2006, the Wikimedia Foundation had five paid employees:[26] two programmers, an administrative assistant, a coordinator handling fundraising and grants, and an interim executive director,[27] Brad Patrick, previously the foundation's general counsel. Patrick ceased his activity as interim director in January 2007, and then resigned from his position as legal counsel, effective April 1, 2007. He was replaced by Mike Godwin as general counsel and legal coordinator in July 2007.[28]
In January 2007, Carolyn Doran was named chief operating officer and Sandy Ordonez came on board as head of communications.[29] Doran began working as a part-time bookkeeper in 2006 after being sent by a temporary agency. Doran later left the foundation in July 2007, and Sue Gardner was hired as consultant and special advisor (later CEO). Some months after Doran's departure, it was determined[30] that she was a convicted felon, with a DUI arrest during her tenure at the foundation and a substantial criminal history, including shooting her boyfriend and complicity in credit card forgery.[31] Her departure from the organization was cited as one of the reasons the foundation took about seven months to release its fiscal 2007 financial audit.[32]
Danny Wool, officially the grant coordinator but also largely involved in fundraising and business development, resigned in March 2007. In February 2007, the foundation added a new position, chapters coordinator, and hired Delphine Ménard,[33] who had been occupying the position as a volunteer since August 2005. Cary Bass was hired in March 2007 in the position of volunteer coordinator. In May 2007, Vishal Patel was hired to assist in business development.[34] Oleta McHenry was brought in as accountant in May, 2007, through a temporary placement agency and made the official fulltime accountant in August, 2007. In January 2008, the foundation appointed three new staff: Veronique Kessler as the new chief financial and operating officer, Kul Wadhwa to replace Vishal Patel as head of business development, and Jay Walsh as head of communications.
In June 2008, the foundation announced two staff additions in fundraising: Rebecca Handler as major gifts officer and Rand Montoya as head of community giving.[35] Soon afterward, Sara Crouse was hired as head of partnerships and foundation relations.[36] In fall 2008, the foundation hired three software developers: Tomasz Finc, Ariel Glenn, and Trevor Parscal.[37]
A list of Wikimedia Foundation staff can be found at the Wikimedia Foundation's staff page.
[ | Tags:Sue Gardner,Brad Patrick,General Counsel,Mike Godwin,Chief Operating Officer,Temporary Agency,Felon,Dui, Board of Trustees |
Board members at Wikimania 2009 in Buenos Aires
These are the members of the Board of Trustees and the expiry of their terms, as of July 2010[update]:[38]
Ting Chen, chair (July 2011)
Stuart West, vice-chair and treasurer (December 2010)
Samuel Klein, executive secretary (July 2011)
Jan-Bart de Vreede (December 2010)
Jimmy Wales, chairman emeritus (December 2010)
Matt Halprin (December 2010)
Bishakha Datta (December 2010)
Kat Walsh (July 2011)
Arne Klempert (July 2012)
Phoebe Ayers (July 2012)
[ | Tags: Advisory Board |
The Advisory Board is 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.[39] As of August 2010[update], the members are:
Ward Cunningham
Melissa Hagemann
Benjamin Mako Hill
Mimi Ito
Mitch Kapor
Neeru Khosla
Teemu Leinonen
Rebecca MacKinnon
Wayne Mackintosh
Roger McNamee
Domas Mituzas
Trevor Neilson
Craig Newmark
Florence Nibart-Devouard
Achal Prabhala
Clay Shirky
Michael Snow
Angela Beesley Starling
Jing Wang
Ethan Zuckerman
[ | Tags: Projects |
The Wikimedia projects logo family
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 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.
Name
Web address
Launched
Description
Wikipedia
wikipedia.org
2001-01-15
Encyclopedia containing more than 13 million articles in 266 languages.
Meta-Wiki
meta.wikimedia.org
2001-11-09
Wiki devoted to the coordination of the Wikimedia projects.
Wiktionary
wiktionary.org
2002-12-12
Dictionary cataloging meanings, synonyms, etymologies and translations.
Wikibooks
wikibooks.org
2003-07-10
Collection of free educational textbooks and learning materials.
Wikiquote
wikiquote.org
2003-07-10
Collection of quotations structured in numerous ways.
Wikisource
wikisource.org
2003-11-24
Project to provide and translate free source documents, such as public domain texts.
Wikimedia Commons
commons.wikimedia.org
2004-09-07
Repository of images, sounds, videos and general media, containing over 6 million files.
Wikimedia Incubator
incubator.wikimedia.org
2006-06-02
Used to test possible new languages for existing projects.
Wikispecies
species.wikimedia.org
2004-09-13
Directory of species data on animalia, plantae, fungi, bacteria, archaea, protista and all other forms of life.
Wikinews
wikinews.org
2004-12-03
News source containing original reporting by citizen journalists from many countries.
Wikiversity
wikiversity.org
2006-08-15
Educational and research materials and activities.
Wikimedia Outreach
outreach.wikimedia.org
2009–10
Promotion of Wikimedia projects
Wikimedia Strategic planning
strategy.wikimedia.org
summer 2009
Strategy planning work for all Wikimedia projects
Wikimedia Usability Initiative
usability.wikimedia.org
2008
Usability team wiki
Wikimania
wikimania.wikimedia.org
Wikimania conference websites
Wikipedia Test Wiki
test.wikipedia.org
Test wiki that runs a recent version of MediaWiki
Wikimedia Surveys
survey.wikimedia.org
Survey aggregation website
[ | Tags:Wikiquote,Wikibooks,Wikisource,Wikimedia Commons,Wikispecies,Wikinews,Wikiversity, Wikimania |
Main articles: Wikimania and Wikimania page at Meta-Wiki
Wikimedia organizes each year Wikimania, a conference for users of the Wikimedia Foundation projects. It was first organized in Frankfurt (Germany), 2005.
[ | Tags: Local chapters |
World map showing countries that have local chapters in blue.
Wikimedia projects have an international scope. To continue this success on an organizational level, Wikimedia is building an international network of associated organizations.
Local chapters are self-dependent organizations that share the goals of the Wikimedia Foundation and support them within a specified geographical region. They support the foundation, the Wikimedia community and Wikimedia projects in different ways — by collecting donations, organizing local events and projects and spreading the word of Wikimedia, free content and Wiki culture. They also provide the community and potential partners with a point of contact capable of fulfilling specific local needs.
Local chapters are self-dependent associations with no legal control of nor responsibility for the websites of the Wikimedia Foundation and vice versa.
Area
Title
URL
Since
Argentina
Wikimedia Argentina
wikimedia.org.ar
02007-09-01 September 1, 2007
Australia
Wikimedia Australia
wikimedia.org.au
02008-03-01 March 1, 2008
Austria
Wikimedia Österreich
wikimedia.at
02008-02-26 February 26, 2008
Brazil
Wikimedia Brasil
br.wikimedia.org
02008-10-07 October 7, 2008
Czech Republic
Wikimedia Česká republika
wikimedia.cz
02008-03-06 March 6, 2008
Denmark
Wikimedia Danmark
wikimedia.dk
02009-07-03 July 3, 2009
France
Wikimédia France
wikimedia.fr
02004-10-23 October 23, 2004
Germany
Wikimedia Deutschland
wikimedia.de
02004-06-13 June 13, 2004
Hong Kong
香港維基媒體協會
wikimedia.hk
02008-03-01 March 1, 2008
Hungary
Wikimédia Magyarország
wiki.media.hu
02008-09-27 September 27, 2008
Indonesia
Wikimedia Indonesia
wikimedia.or.id
02008-10-07 October 7, 2008
Israel
Wikimedia Israel
il.wikimedia.org
02007-06-26 June 26, 2007
Italy
Wikimedia Italia
wikimedia.it
02005-06-17 June 17, 2005
Macedonia
Викимедија Македонија
02009-09-21 September 21, 2009
Netherlands
Wikimedia Nederland
nl.wikimedia.org
02006-03-27 March 27, 2006
Norway
Wikimedia Norge
no.wikimedia.org
02007-06-23 June 23, 2007
Philippines
Wikimedia Philippines
wikimedia.org.ph
02010-04-12 April 12, 2010
Poland
Wikimedia Polska
pl.wikimedia.org
02005-11-18 November 18, 2005
Portugal
Wikimedia Portugal
wikimedia.pt
02009-07-03 July 3, 2009
Russia
Викимедиа РУ
wikimedia.ru
02008-05-24 May 24, 2008
Serbia
Wikimedia Србије
rs.wikimedia.org
02005-12-03 December 3, 2005
Sweden
Wikimedia Sverige
se.wikimedia.org
02007-12-11 December 11, 2007
Switzerland
Wikimedia CH
wikimedia.ch
02006-05-14 May 14, 2006
Republic of China
中華民國維基媒體協會
wikimedia.tw
02007-07-04 July 4, 2007
Ukraine
Вікімедіа Україна
wikimedia.org.ua
02009-07-03 July 3, 2009
United Kingdom
Wikimedia UK
uk.wikimedia.org
02009-01-12 January 12, 2009
New York City
Wikimedia New York City
nyc.wikimedia.org
02009-01-12 January 12, 2009
[ | Tags: Disputes |
This section requires expansion.
Many disputes have resulted in litigation[40][41][42][43] while others have not.[44] Attorney Matt Zimmerman stated "Without strong liability protection, it would be difficult for Wikipedia to continue to provide a platform for user-created encyclopedia content."[45]
[ | Tags: Finances |
The Wikimedia Foundation relies on public contributions and grants to fund its mission.[46] It is exempt from federal income tax[46][47] and from state income tax.[46][48] It is not a private foundation, and contributions to it qualify as tax-deductible charitable contributions.[46] The continued technical and economic growth of each of the Wikimedia projects is dependent mostly on donations but the Wikimedia Foundation also increases its revenue by alternative means of funding such as grants, | Tags: |