   #copyright

Wikimedia Foundation

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Websites and the Internet

   Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
   Logo of the Wikimedia Foundation,
   designed by Wikipedia user " Neolux"
       Type     Not-for-profit corporation
     Founded    June 20, 2003
   Headquarters United States St. Petersburg, Florida, USA
    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
                Brad Patrick, Counsel
                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

   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
   Wikipedia co-founder 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.

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.

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. 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. James Forrester was
   subsequently appointed to the position.

   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.

   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.
   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.

Board of Directors

     * Jimmy Wales
     * Erik Möller
     * Michael E. Davis
     * Florence Nibart-Devouard
     * Tim Shell

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
