Wikimedia Foundation

About the Foundation

Most of the official information about the Foundation may be found at the Foundation website: http://wikimediafoundation.org.

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.

Our Organigramme

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: http://www.wikimediafoundation.org/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. It is known as the Board of Trustees.

The trustees (article IV, sec. 2) include the following individuals:

Florence Nibart-Devouard, Chair (term until June 2008)
Jimmy Wales, Chairman Emeritus (term until December 2007)
Michael Davis, Treasurer (term until December 2007)
Erik Möller, Executive Secretary (term until June 2007)
Kat Walsh (term until June 2007)
Oscar van Dillen (term until June 2007)
Jan-Bart de Vreede, Vice-chair (term until December 2007)

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.

Organization

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.

Channels of discussion

WMF is managed thanks to the use of

http://meta.wikimedia.org for discussion and organisation of all public issues - This wiki is entirely public and editable by everyone. It is multilingual.
http://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 meta on the Wikimedia site feedback page.
internal-l, a non public mailing list, with access restricted to board members and officers.
private-l, Another private mailing list may also be used to discuss technical issues

Channels of communication to be added (OTRS, Quarto).

What do we spend money on

budget

One of the main expenses for the Foundation is hardware.

Description of the hardware that powers Wikimedia : Wikimedia servers
Frequently updated status of this hardware : Separate wiki

We already own some of our active and secondary/tangentially-related domain names, while others are still free or already owned.

needs to be completed

Where does the money come from

needs to be completed Donations.

How can you get involved

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.

Wikimedia Coordination and Projects

Project Coordination

Wikimedia Meta-Wiki is a website about the Wikimedia Foundation's projects and coordination.

Other Wikimedia Projects

**Projects at a glance**
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 430,000 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.

Recent 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.