Wikimedia movement

Wikimedia movement
2012 group photograph
Type Anarchy of individual contributors, chapters, user groups and thematic organizations
Focus Free, open-content, wiki-based Internet projects
Area served
Worldwide
Services Authoring and editing Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikispecies, Wikinews, Wikiversity, and Wikivoyage
Developing MediaWiki software
Website meta.wikimedia.org

The Wikimedia movement, or simply Wikimedia, is the global community of contributors to Wikimedia Foundation projects. The movement was created around Wikipedia's community, and has since expanded to the other Wikimedia projects, including the commons projects Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata, and volunteer software developers contributing to MediaWiki. These volunteers are supported by numerous organizations around the world, including the Wikimedia Foundation, related chapters, thematic organizations, and user groups.

The name "Wikimedia", a compound of wiki and media, was coined by American author Sheldon Rampton in a post to the English mailing list in March 2003,[1] three months after Wiktionary became the second wiki-based project hosted on Jimmy Wales' platform, and three months before the Wikimedia Foundation was announced and incorporated.[2][3] "Wikimedia" may also refer to the Wikimedia projects.

Wikipedia community

The Wikipedia community is the community of contributors of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. It consists of editors (or contributors) and administrators, known as admins. The Arbitration Committee is a panel of editors responsible for conducting arbitration to resolve serious disputes between editors of the encyclopedia. The committee has the authority to impose binding sanctions, and also determines which users have access to special permissions.

Projects

Wikimedia projects include:

  • Wikipedia, a web-based encyclopedia
  • Wiktionary, a dictionary
  • Wikibooks, educational textbooks
  • Wikinews, news articles
  • Wikiquote, a collection of quotations
  • Wikisource, a library of source texts and documents
  • Wikiversity, educational material
  • Wikivoyage, a travel guide
  • Wikispecies, a taxonomic catalogue of species
  • Wikimedia Commons, a data repository of media like images, videos and sounds. These files are accessible by all the other projects mentioned above, hence the name "Commons."
  • Wikidata, a common source of data, also accessible by the other projects

Organizations

Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia movement, an overview
  Wikimedia chapters (blue)
  Wikimedia user groups with a geographic focus (green)

The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) is an American non-profit and charitable organization headquartered in San Francisco, California. It owns the domain names and operates most of the movement's websites, like Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, as well as Wikimedia Commons.

The WMF was founded in 2003 by Jimmy Wales as a way to fund Wikipedia and its sister projects through non-profit means. Its purpose is "... to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."[2][4][5]

According to the WMF's 2015 financial statements, in 2015 the WMF had a budget of $72 million USD, spending $52 million USD on its operation, and increasing its reserves to $82 million USD.[6] WMF is primarily funded by donations with the average donation being $15.[7]

Chapters

Chapters are organizations that support Wikimedia projects in specified geographical regions, mostly countries. There are 41 chapters.

Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE) is the largest chapter, with a total budget of €20 million. WMDE allocates approximately €1 million to support the corporation responsible for distributing donations, and €4 million for transfer to the WMF.[8][9]

To have the same procedure, every chapter follows the same process and requests its yearly budget at the funds dissemination committee. The foundation as internet domain owner of the project pages requests a share of the donations via the website in a country (e.g., for Germany, Switzerland), or pays a chapter the agreed amount (other chapters). A total of under 4 Mio USD is distributed via this way to chapters and thematic organizations.[10] The legal base is a "Chapters Agreement" with the foundation.[11]

Thematic organizations

Thematic organizations are founded to support Wikimedia projects in a focal area; there is one such organization.[10][12]

User groups

User groups have less formal requirements than chapters and thematic organizations. They support and promote the Wikimedia projects locally or on a specific theme, topic, subject, or issue. At the beginning of 2016, there were 55 user groups.[13] Once they are recognized by the Affiliations Committee, they enter into a "User Groups Agreement and Code of Conduct" with the foundation.

See also

  • Wikipedia:Meta

References

  1. ↑ Rampton, Sheldon (March 16, 2003). "Wikipedia English mailing list message".
  2. 1 2 Jimmy Wales (June 20, 2003). "Announcing Wikimedia Foundation". mail:wikipedia-l. Retrieved November 26, 2012.
  3. ↑ Florida Department of State, Division of Corporations. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Record and Letters of Incoporation, Wikimedia Foundation, filed June 20, 2003
  4. ↑ Neate, Rupert (October 7, 2008). "Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales goes bananas". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved October 25, 2009. The encyclopedia's huge fan base became such a drain on Bomis's resources that Mr. Wales, and co-founder Larry Sanger, thought of a radical new funding model – charity.
  5. ↑ "Bylaws". Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 2016-09-24.
  6. ↑ "WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION, INC. Financial Statements, June 30, 2015 and 2014" (PDF). Upload.wikimedia.org.
  7. ↑ "Frequently Asked Questions". WikiMedia Foundation. Retrieved 23 September 2017.
  8. ↑ "Wikimedia chapters - Meta". Meta.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 2016-09-24.
  9. ↑ "Jahresplan 2016 – Wikimedia Deutschland". Wikimedia.de (in German). 2015-11-28. Retrieved 2016-09-24.
  10. 1 2 "Template:APG navigation - Meta". Meta.wikimedia.org. 2016-09-05. Retrieved 2016-09-24.
  11. ↑ "Wikimedia chapters/Creation guide - Meta". Meta.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 2016-09-24.
  12. ↑ "Wikimedia movement affiliates/Frequently asked questions - Meta". Meta.wikimedia.org. 2016-09-15. Retrieved 2016-09-24.
  13. ↑ "Wikimedia user groups - Meta". Meta.wikimedia.org. 2016-06-30. Retrieved 2016-09-24.
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