Wikimedia Foundation

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For information about the Wikimedia Foundation's involvement with the English Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Wikimedia Foundation.

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
AbbreviationWMF
FoundedJune 20, 2003; 20 years ago (2003-06-20), St. Petersburg, Florida, US
FounderJimmy Wales
Type501(c)(3), charitable organization
EIN 200049703
FocusFree, open-content, multilingual, wiki-based Internet projects
Location
Area served
Worldwide
ProductsWikipedia, MediaWiki, Wikibooks, Wikidata, Wikifunctions, Wikimedia Commons, Wikinews, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikispecies, Wikiversity, Wikivoyage, Wiktionary
Membership
Board-only
CEO
Maryana Iskander
Revenue
  • $154.7 million (2022)
  • $162.9 million (2021)
Expenses
  • $146.0 million (2022)
  • $111.8 million (2021)
Endowment> $100 million (2021)
Employees
> around 700 staff/contractors (as of November 2022)
Website
ASN
[1][2][3][4]

The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws.[5] It is best known as the host platform for Wikipedia, the largest crowdsourced online encyclopedia in the world. The organization also hosts other related projects and MediaWiki, a wiki software.[6][7][8]

The Wikimedia Foundation was established in 2003 in St. Petersburg, Florida, by Jimmy Wales as a nonprofit way to fund Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and other crowdsourced wiki projects that had until then been hosted by Bomis, Wales's for-profit company.[1] The Foundation finances itself mainly through millions of small donations from Wikipedia readers, collected through email campaigns and annual fundraising banners placed on Wikipedia and its sister projects.[9] These are complemented by grants from philanthropic organizations and tech companies, and starting in 2022, by services income from Wikimedia Enterprise.

The Foundation has grown rapidly throughout its existence. By 2022, it employed around 700 staff and contractors, with annual revenues of $155 million, annual expenses of $146 million, net assets of $240 million and a growing endowment, which surpassed $100 million in June 2021.

Mission

The Wikimedia Foundation's mission 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."[10]

To serve this mission, the Foundation provides the technical and organizational infrastructure to enable members of the public to develop wiki content in multiple languages.[10] The Foundation does not write or curate any of the content on the wikis itself.[11] This is done by volunteers, such as the Wikipedians who create and maintain Wikipedia. It does collaborate with a network of individual volunteers and affiliated organizations such as Wikimedia chapters, thematic organizations, user groups and other partners in different countries all over the world, and promises in its mission statement to make useful information from its projects available on the internet free of charge in perpetuity.[10] It also engages in political advocacy.[12] The Foundation's strategic direction, formulated in 2017, envisages that it "will become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge" by 2030.[13]

History

Further information: History of Wikipedia

Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger founded Wikipedia in 2001 as a feeder project to supplement Nupedia. The project was originally funded by Bomis, Wales's for-profit business, and edited by a rapidly growing community of volunteer editors. The early community discussed a variety of ways to support the ongoing costs of upkeep, and was broadly opposed to running ads on the site,[14] so the idea of setting up a charitable foundation gained prominence.[15] That also addressed an open question of what entity should hold onto trademarks for the project.

The name "Wikimedia", a compound of wiki and media, was coined by American author Sheldon Rampton in a post to the English Wikipedia mailing list in March 2003,[16] three months after Wiktionary became the second wiki-based project hosted on the original server. The Wikimedia Foundation was incorporated in Florida on June 20, 2003.[1][17] A small fundraising campaign to keep the servers running was run in October 2003.[18] The Foundation was granted section 501(c)(3) status by the U.S. Internal Revenue Code as a public charity in 2005, making donations to the Foundation tax-deductible for U.S. federal income tax purposes.[19] Its National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE) code is B60 (Adult, Continuing education).[20][21]

The Foundation applied to trademark the name Wikipedia in the US on September 14, 2004. The mark was granted registration status on January 10, 2006. Trademark protection was accorded by Japan on December 16, 2004, and by the European Union on January 20, 2005. Subsets of Wikipedia were already being distributed in book and DVD form, and there were discussions about licensing the logo and wordmark.[22]

On December 11, 2006, the Foundation's board noted that it could not become a membership organization, as initially planned but not implemented, due to an inability to meet the registration requirements of Florida statutory law. The bylaws were accordingly amended to remove all references to membership rights and activities.[23]

In 2007, the Foundation decided to move its headquarters from Florida to the San Francisco Bay Area. Considerations cited for choosing San Francisco were proximity to like-minded organizations and potential partners, a better talent pool, as well as cheaper and more convenient international travel.[24][25][26] The move was completed by January 31, 2008, into a headquarters on Stillman Street in San Francisco.[27] It later moved to New Montgomery Street, and then to One Montgomery Tower.[28]

On October 25, 2021, the Foundation launched Wikimedia Enterprise, a commercial Wikimedia content delivery service aimed at groups that want to use high-volume APIs, starting with Big Tech enterprises.[29][30] In June 2022, Google and the Internet Archive were announced as the service's first customers, though only Google will pay for the service.[31] The same announcement noted a shifting focus towards smaller companies with similar data needs, supporting the service through "a lot paying a little".

Projects and initiatives

Wikimedia projects

For the complete list, see wmf:Special:SiteMatrix and m:Complete list of Wikimedia projects.
Logos of 16 Wikimedia sister projects

Content on most Wikimedia project websites is licensed for redistribution under v4.0 of the Attribution and Share-alike Creative Commons licenses. The Foundation owns and operates 11 wikis that are written, curated, designed, and governed by their communities of volunteer editors. Any member of the public is welcome to contribute; registering a named user account is optional. These wikis follow a free content model, with the stated goal of disseminating knowledge to the world. They include, by launch date:

Certain additional projects provide infrastructure or coordination of the free knowledge projects. These include:

  • Meta-Wiki – central site for coordinating all projects and the Wikimedia community
  • Wikimedia Incubator – a single wiki for drafting the core pages of new language editions in development
  • MediaWiki – site for coordinating work on MediaWiki software
  • Wikitech – including Wikimedia Cloud Services, Data Services, Toolforge, and other technical projects and infrastructure
  • Phabricator – not a wiki, but a global ticketing system for tracking issues and feature requests

Affiliates

Further information: Wikimedia movement and List of Wikimedia chapters

Wikimedia affiliates are independent and formally recognized groups of people working together to support and contribute to the Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia Foundation officially recognizes three types of affiliates: chapters, thematic organizations, and user groups. Affiliates organize and engage in activities to support and contribute to the Wikimedia movement, such as regional conferences, outreach, edit-a-thons, hackathons, public relations, public policy advocacy, GLAM engagement, and Wikimania.[32][33][34] While many of these things are also done by individual contributors or less formal groups, they are not referred to as affiliates.

Wikimedia chapters and thematic organizations are incorporated non-profit organizations. They are recognized by the Foundation as affiliates officially when its board does so. The board's decisions are based on recommendations of an Affiliations Committee (AffCom), composed of Wikimedia community members, which reports regularly to the board. The Affiliations Committee directly approves the recognition of unincorporated user groups. Affiliates are formally recognized by the Wikimedia Foundation, but are independent of it, with no legal control of or responsibility for Wikimedia projects and their content.[33][34][35]

The Foundation began recognizing chapters in 2004.[36] In 2012, the Foundation approved, finalized and adopted the thematic organization and user group recognition models. An additional model for movement partners, was also approved, but as of May 19, 2022 has not yet been finalized or adopted.[34][37]

Wikimania

Main article: Wikimania

Wikimania is an annual global conference for Wikimedians and Wikipedians, started in 2005. The first Wikimania was held in Frankfurt, Germany, in 2005. Wikimania is organized by a committee supported usually by the local national chapter, with support from local institutions (such as a library or university) and usually from the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikimania has been held in cities such as Buenos Aires,[38] Cambridge,[39] Haifa,[40] Hong Kong,[41] Taipei, London,[42] Mexico City,[43] Esino Lario, Italy,[44] Montreal, Cape Town, and Stockholm. The 2020 conference scheduled to take place in Bangkok was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, along with those of 2021 and 2022, which were held online as a series of virtual, interactive presentations. The in-person conference returned in 2023 when it was held in Singapore, at which UNESCO joined as a partner organization.[45]

Technology

The Wikimedia Foundation maintains the hardware that runs its projects in its own servers. It also maintains the MediaWiki platform and many other software libraries that run its projects.

Hardware

See also: Wikipedia § Hardware operations and support
Overview of system architecture, April 2020. See server layout diagrams on Meta-Wiki.
Wikimedia Foundation servers

Wikipedia employed a single server until 2004 when the server setup was expanded into a distributed multitier architecture.[46] Server downtime in 2003 led to the first fundraising drive.

By December 2009, Wikimedia ran on co-located servers, with 300 servers in Florida and 44 in Amsterdam.[47] In 2008, it also switched from multiple different Linux operating system vendors to Ubuntu Linux.[48][49] In 2019, it switched to Debian.[50]

By January 2013, Wikimedia transitioned to newer infrastructure in an Equinix facility in Ashburn, Virginia, citing reasons of "more reliable connectivity" and "fewer hurricanes".[51][52] In years prior, the hurricane seasons had been a cause of distress.[53]

In October 2013, Wikimedia Foundation started looking for a second facility that would be used side by side with the main facility in Ashburn, citing reasons of redundancy (e.g. emergency fallback) and to prepare for simultaneous multi-datacenter service.[54][55] This followed a year in which a fiber cut caused the Wikimedia projects to be unavailable for one hour in August 2012.[56][57]

Apart from the second facility for redundancy coming online in 2014,[58][59] the number of servers needed to run the infrastructure in a single facility has been mostly stable since 2009. As of November 2015, the main facility in Ashburn hosts 520 servers in total which includes servers for newer services besides Wikimedia project wikis, such as cloud services (Toolforge)[60][61] and various services for metrics, monitoring, and other system administration.[62]

In 2017, Wikimedia Foundation deployed a caching cluster in an Equinix facility in Singapore, the first of its kind in Asia.[63]

Software

The operation of Wikimedia depends on MediaWiki, a custom-made, free and open-source wiki software platform written in PHP and built upon the MariaDB database since 2013;[64] previously the MySQL database was used.[65] The software incorporates programming features such as a macro language, variables, a transclusion system for templates, and URL redirection. MediaWiki is licensed under the GNU General Public License and it is used by all Wikimedia projects.

Originally, Wikipedia ran on UseModWiki written in Perl by Clifford Adams (Phase I), which initially required CamelCase for article hyperlinks; the double bracket style was incorporated later. Starting in January 2002 (Phase II), Wikipedia began running on a PHP wiki engine with a MySQL database; this software was custom-made for Wikipedia by Magnus Manske. The Phase II software was repeatedly modified to accommodate the exponentially increasing demand. In July 2002 (Phase III), Wikipedia shifted to the third-generation software, MediaWiki, originally written by Lee Daniel Crocker.

Some MediaWiki extensions are installed to extend the functionality of MediaWiki software. In April 2005, an Apache Lucene extension[66][67] was added to MediaWiki's built-in search and Wikipedia switched from MySQL to Lucene and later switched to CirrusSearch which is based on Elasticsearch for searching.[68] The Wikimedia Foundation also uses CiviCRM[69] and WordPress.[70]

The Foundation published official Wikipedia mobile apps for Android and iOS devices and in March 2015, the apps were updated to include mobile user-friendly features.[71]

Finances

Wikimedia Foundation revenue, expenses and end-of-year net assets (in US$), 2003–2023
Green: revenue (excluding direct donations to the endowment)
Red: expenses (including WMF payments into the endowment)
Black: net assets (excluding the endowment)[72]

The Wikimedia Foundation mainly finances itself through donations from the public, collected through email campaigns and annual fundraising banners placed on Wikipedia, as well as grants from various tech companies and philanthropic organizations.[9][73] Campaigns for the Wikimedia Endowment have included emails asking donors to leave Wikimedia money in their will.[74]

As a 501c3 charity, the Foundation is exempt from federal and state income tax.[75][76] It is not a private foundation, and contributions to it qualify as tax-deductible charitable contributions.[73] In 2007, 2008 and 2009, Charity Navigator gave Wikimedia an overall rating of four out of four possible stars,[77] increased from three to four stars in 2010.[78] As of January 2020, the rating was still four stars (overall score 98.14 out of 100), based on data from FY2018.[79]

The Foundation also increases its revenue through federal grants, sponsorship, services and brand merchandising. The Wikimedia OAI-PMH update feed service, targeted primarily at search engines and similar bulk analysis and republishing, was a source of revenue for a number of years.[80][81] DBpedia was given access to this feed free of charge.[82] An expanded version of data feeds and content services was launched in 2021 as Wikimedia Enterprise, an LLC subsidiary of the Foundation.[83]

In July 2014, the Foundation announced it would accept Bitcoin donations.[84] In 2021, cryptocurrencies accounted for just 0.08% of all donations[85][86] and on May 1, 2022, the Foundation stopped accepting cryptocurrency donations, following a Wikimedia community vote.[86][87]

The Foundation's net assets grew from an initial $57,000 at the end of its first fiscal year, ending June 30, 2004,[88] to $53.5 million in mid-2014[89][90] and $231 million (plus a $100 million endowment) by the end of June 2021; that year, the Foundation also announced plans to launch Wikimedia Enterprise, to let large people pay by volume for high-volume access to otherwise rate-limited APIs.[91]

In 2020, the Foundation donated $4.5 million to Tides Advocacy to create a "Knowledge Equity Fund", to provide grants to organizations whose work would not otherwise be covered by Wikimedia grants but addresses racial inequities in accessing and contributing to free knowledge resources.[92][93]

Wikimedia Endowment

In January 2016, the Foundation announced the creation of an endowment to safeguard its future.[94] The Wikimedia Endowment was established as a donor-advised fund at the Tides Foundation, with a stated goal to raise $100 million in the next 10 years.[95] Craig Newmark was one of the initial donors, giving $1 million.[96] Peter Baldwin and his wife, Lisbet Rausing, donated $5 million to it in 2017.[97]

In 2018, major donations to the endowment were received from Amazon and Facebook ($1 million each) and George Soros ($2 million).[98][99][100] In 2019, donations included $2 million from Google,[101] $3.5 million more from Baldwin and Rausing,[97] $2.5 million more from Newmark,[102] and another $1 million from Amazon in October 2019 and again in September 2020.[103][104]

As of 2022, the advisory board consists of Jimmy Wales, Peter Baldwin, former Wikimedia Foundation Trustees Patricio Lorente and Phoebe Ayers, former Wikimedia Foundation Board Visitor Doron Weber of the Sloan Foundation, investor Annette Campbell-White, businessman Niels Christian Nielsen, and venture capitalist Michael Kim.

The Foundation itself has provided annual grants of $5 million to its Endowment since 2016.[105] These amounts have been recorded as part of the Foundation's "awards and grants" expenses.[106] In September 2021, the Foundation announced that the Wikimedia Endowment had reached its initial $100 million fundraising goal in June 2021, five years ahead of its initial target.[4]

Financial development

The Foundation summarizes its assets in the "Statements of Activities" in its audited reports. These do not include funds in the Wikimedia Endowment, however expenses from the 2015–16 financial year onward include payments to the Wikimedia Endowment.[107]

Year Source Revenue Expenses Asset rise Net assets at
end of year
2022/2023 PDF $180,174,103 $169,095,381 $15,619,804 $254,971,336
2021/2022 PDF $154,686,521 $145,970,915 $8,173,996 $239,351,532
2020/2021 PDF $162,886,686 $111,839,819 $50,861,811 $231,177,536
2019/2020 PDF $129,234,327 $112,489,397 $14,674,300 $180,315,725
2018/2019 PDF $120,067,266 $91,414,010 $30,691,855 $165,641,425
2017/2018 PDF $104,505,783 $81,442,265 $21,619,373 $134,949,570
2016/2017 PDF $91,242,418 $69,136,758 $21,547,402 $113,330,197
2015/2016 PDF $81,862,724 $65,947,465 $13,962,497 $91,782,795
2014/2015 PDF $75,797,223 $52,596,782 $24,345,277 $77,820,298
2013/2014 PDF $52,465,287 $45,900,745 $8,285,897 $53,475,021
2012/2013 PDF $48,635,408 $35,704,796 $10,260,066 $45,189,124
2011/2012 PDF $38,479,665 $29,260,652 $10,736,914 $34,929,058
2010/2011 PDF $24,785,092 $17,889,794 $9,649,413 $24,192,144
2009/2010 PDF $17,979,312 $10,266,793 $6,310,964 $14,542,731
2008/2009 PDF $8,658,006 $5,617,236 $3,053,599 $8,231,767
2007/2008 PDF $5,032,981 $3,540,724 $3,519,886 $5,178,168
2006/2007 PDF $2,734,909 $2,077,843 $654,066 $1,658,282
2005/2006 PDF $1,508,039 $791,907 $736,132 $1,004,216
2004/2005 PDF $379,088 $177,670 $211,418 $268,084
2003/2004 PDF $80,129 $23,463 $56,666 $56,666

Expenses

A plurality of Wikimedia Foundation expenses are salaries and wages, followed by community and affiliate grants, contributions to the endowment, and other professional operating expenses and services.[108][72]

Wikimedia Foundation expenses 2004–2020
  • Wikimedia Foundation's expenses evolution by rubrics in USD

    Wikimedia Foundation's expenses evolution by rubrics in USD

  • Wikimedia Foundation's expenses as a percentage of the whole

    Wikimedia Foundation's expenses as a percentage of the whole

Grants

Wikimedia Foundation and chapters finance meeting 2012, Paris

The Wikimedia Foundation has received a steady stream of grants from other foundations throughout its history. In 2008, the Foundation received a $40,000 grant from the Open Society Institute to create a printable version of Wikipedia.[109] It also received a $262,000 grant from the Stanton Foundation to purchase hardware,[110] a $500,000 unrestricted grant from Vinod and Neeru Khosla,[111] who later that year joined the Foundation advisory board,[112] and $177,376 from the historians Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin (Arcadia Fund), among others.[110] In March 2008, the Foundation announced what was then its largest donation yet: a three-year, $3 million grant from the Sloan Foundation.[113]

In 2009, the Foundation received four grants. The first was a $890,000 Stanton Foundation grant to help study and simplify the user interface for first-time authors of Wikipedia.[114] The second was a $300,000 Ford Foundation grant in July 2009 for Wikimedia Commons, to improve the interface for uploading multimedia files.[115] In August 2009, the Foundation received a $500,000 grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.[116] Also in August 2009, the Omidyar Network committed up to $2 million over two years to Wikimedia.[117]

In 2010, Google donated $2 million[118] and the Stanton Foundation granted $1.2 million to fund the Public Policy Initiative, a pilot program for what later became the Wikipedia Education Program (and the spin-off Wiki Education Foundation).[119][120][121]

In March 2011, the Sloan Foundation authorized another $3 million grant, to be funded over three years, with the first $1 million to come in July 2011 and the remaining $2 million to be funded in August 2012 and 2013. As a donor, Doron Weber from the Sloan Foundation gained Board Visitor status at the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees.[122] In August 2011, the Stanton Foundation pledged to fund a $3.6 million grant of which $1.8 million was funded and the remainder was to come in September 2012. As of 2011, this was the largest grant the Wikimedia Foundation had ever received.[123] In November 2011, the Foundation received a $500,000 donation from the Brin Wojcicki Foundation.[124][125]

In 2012, the Foundation was awarded a grant of $1.25 million from Lisbet Rausing[124] and Peter Baldwin through the Charities Aid Foundation, scheduled to be funded in five equal installments from 2012 through 2015. In 2014, the Foundation received the largest single gift in its history, a $5 million unrestricted donation from an anonymous donor supporting $1 million worth of expenses annually for the next five years.[126] In March 2012, The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, established by the Intel co-founder and his wife, awarded the Wikimedia Foundation a $449,636 grant to develop Wikidata.[127] This was part of a larger grant, much of which went to Wikimedia Germany, which took on ownership of the development effort.[128]

Between 2014 and 2015, the Foundation received $500,000 from the Monarch Fund, $100,000 from the Arcadia Fund and an undisclosed amount from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation to support the Wikipedia Zero initiative.[129][130][131]

In 2015, a grant agreement was reached with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to build a search engine called the "Knowledge Engine", a project that proved controversial.[132][133] In 2017, the Sloan Foundation awarded another $3 million grant for a three-year period,[122] and Google donated another $1.1 million to the Foundation in 2019.[134]

The following have donated $500,000 or more each (2008–2019, not including gifts to the Wikimedia Endowment; list may be incomplete):

Total
($000s) 		Donor Years
9,000 Sloan Foundation
  • 2008–2013
  • 2017–2019
5,952 Stanton Foundation 2009–2012
5,000 (anonymous) 2014–2018
3,100 Google 2010, 2019
2,000 Omidyar Network 2009–2010
1,527 Rausing, Baldwin
via Arcadia, Charities Aid
  • 2008
  • 2012–2015
1,300 Hewlett 2009–2010
500 Sergey Brin & Anne Wojcicki 2010
500 Monarch Fund 2014–2015

Staff

History

Foundation staff in January 2019

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 seven more official appointments.[135]

In January 2006, the Foundation created a number of committees, including the Communication Committee, in an attempt to further organize activities somewhat handled by volunteers at that time.[136] Starling resigned that month to spend more time on his PhD program.

As of October 4, 2006, the Foundation had five paid employees:[137] two programmers, an administrative assistant, a coordinator handling fundraising and grants, and an interim executive director,[138] 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 who served as general counsel and legal coordinator from July 2007[139] to 2010.

In January 2007, Carolyn Doran was named chief operating officer and Sandy Ordonez joined as head of communications.[140] Doran began working as a part-time bookkeeper in 2006 after being sent by a temporary agency. Doran, found to have had a criminal record,[141] left the Foundation in July 2007 and Sue Gardner was hired as consultant and special advisor; she became the executive director in December 2007.[142] Florence Devouard cited Doran's departure from the organization as one of the reasons the Foundation took about seven months to release its fiscal 2007 financial audit.[143]

Exterior view of the previous Wikimedia Foundation's San Francisco headquarters at New Montgomery Street in 2014

Danny Wool, officially the grant coordinator and also involved in fundraising and business development, resigned in March 2007. He accused Wales of misusing the Foundation's funds for recreational purposes and said that Wales had his Wikimedia credit card taken away in part because of his spending habits, a claim Wales denied.[144] In February 2007, the Foundation added a position, chapters coordinator, and hired Delphine Ménard,[145] 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 January 2008, the Foundation appointed Veronique Kessler as the new chief financial and operating officer, Kul Wadhwa as head of business development and Jay Walsh as head of communications.

In March 2013, Gardner announced she would be leaving her position at the Foundation.[146] Lila Tretikov was appointed executive director in May 2014;[147][148] she resigned in March 2016. Former chief communications officer Katherine Maher was appointed the interim executive director, a position made permanent in June 2016.[149] Maher served as executive director until April 2021.[150][151]

Present department structure

One Montgomery Tower, the building where the Wikimedia Foundation headquarters have been located since 2017

As of October 2, 2021, there were around 700 people working at the Foundation.[152] Maryana Iskander was named the incoming CEO in September 2021, and took over that role in January 2022.[153]

As of July 2022, the WMF has the following department structure:[154]

  • Advancement: responsible for fundraising, strategic partnerships, and grantmaking programs.
  • Communications: responsible for Wikimedia brand development, marketing, social media, public relations, and global awareness efforts.
  • Finance and Administration: responsible for ensuring responsible management of Wikimedia Foundation funds and resources.
  • Legal: responsible for mounting opposition to government surveillance and censorship, defending volunteer communities, facilitating policy discussions, and advocating for privacy.
  • Product: responsible for building collaborative tools for knowledge sharing, user research, experience design and cross-device support including mobile apps and voice technology.
  • Talent and Culture: responsible for recruitment and training.
  • Technology: responsible for maintaining and developing the technology platform underpinning the Wikimedia projects, in collaboration with thousands of volunteer developers.

Board of trustees

The Foundation's board of trustees supervises the activities of the Foundation. The founding board had three members, to which two community-elected trustees were added. Starting in 2008 it was composed of ten members:

  • three selected by the community encompassed by all the different Wikimedia projects;
  • two selected by Wikimedia chapters;
  • four appointed by the board itself; and
  • one founder's seat, reserved for Jimmy Wales.[155][156]

Over time, the size of the board and details of the selection processes have evolved. As of 2020, the board may have up to 16 trustees:[157]

  • eight seats sourced from the wider Wikimedia community (affiliates and volunteer community);
  • seven appointed by the board itself; and
  • one founder's seat reserved for Wales.

As of February 2023, the board comprised six community-and-affiliate-selected trustees (Shani Evenstein Sigalov, Dariusz Jemielniak, Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight, Victoria Doronina, Mike Peel and Lorenzo Losa);[158] five Board-appointed trustees (McKinsey & Company director Raju Narisetti,[159] Bahraini human rights activist and blogger Esra'a Al Shafei,[160] management consulting executive Lisa Lewin, Nataliia Tymkiv, and McAfee executive Tanya Capuano); and Wales.[156] Tymkiv chairs the board, with Al Shafei and Sigalov as vice chairs.[161]

In 2015, James Heilman, a trustee recently elected to the board by the community,[162] was removed from his position by a vote of the rest of the board.[163][164] This decision generated dispute among members of the Wikipedia community.[165][166] Heilman later said that he "was given the option of resigning [by the Board] over the last few weeks. As a community elected member I see my mandate as coming from the community which elected me and thus declined to do so. I saw such a move as letting down those who elected me."[167] He subsequently added that while on the Board, he had pushed for greater transparency regarding the Wikimedia Foundation's Knowledge Engine project and its financing,[168] and indicated that his attempts to make public the Knight Foundation grant for the engine had been a factor in his dismissal.[169] Heilman was reelected to the board by the community in 2017.[170]

In January 2016, Arnnon Geshuri joined the board before stepping down amid community controversy about a "no poach" agreement he executed when at Google, which violated United States antitrust law and for which the participating companies paid US$415 million in a class action suit on behalf of affected employees.[171][172]

Disputes

See also: Litigation involving the Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation post-SOPA party, 2012

A number of disputes have resulted in litigation[173][174][175][176] while others have not.[177] Attorney Matt Zimmerman has said, "Without strong liability protection, it would be difficult for Wikipedia to continue to provide a platform for user-created encyclopedia content."[178]

In December 2011, the Foundation hired Washington, D.C., lobbyist Dow Lohnes Government Strategies LLC to lobby Congress.[179] At the time of the hire, the Foundation was concerned about a bill known as the Stop Online Piracy Act.[180] The communities were as well, organizing some of the most visible protest against the bill on the Internet alongside other popular websites.

In October 2013, a German court ruled that the Wikimedia Foundation can be held liable for content added to Wikipedia when there has been a specific complaint; otherwise, the Wikimedia Foundation does not check the content Wikipedia publishes and has no duty to do so.[181]

In June 2014, Bildkonst Upphovsrätt i Sverige filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Wikimedia Sweden.[182]

On June 20, 2014, a defamation lawsuit (Law Division civil case No. L-1400-14) involving Wikipedia editors was filed with the Mercer County Superior Court in New Jersey seeking, inter alia, compensatory and punitive damages.[183][184]

In a March 10, 2015, op-ed for The New York Times, Wales and Tretikov announced the Foundation was filing a lawsuit against the National Security Agency and five other government agencies and officials, including DOJ, calling into question its practice of mass surveillance, which they argued infringed the constitutional rights of the Foundation's readers, editors and staff. They were joined in the suit by eight additional plaintiffs, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.[185][186][187] On October 23, 2015, the United States District Court for the District of Maryland dismissed the suit Wikimedia Foundation v. NSA on grounds of standing. U.S. District Judge T. S. Ellis III ruled that the plaintiffs could not plausibly prove they were subject to upstream surveillance, and that their argument is "riddled with assumptions", "speculations" and "mathematical gymnastics".[188][189] The plaintiffs filed an appeal with the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on February 17, 2016.[190]

In September 2020, WMF's application to become an observer at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was blocked after objections from the government of China[191] over the existence of a Wikimedia Foundation affiliate in Taiwan.[192] In October 2021, WMF's second application was blocked by the government of China for the same reason.[193] In May 2022, six Wikimedia movement affiliate chapters were blocked from being accredited to WIPO's Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) by China, claiming that the chapters were spreading disinformation.[194] In July 2022, China blocked an application by seven Wikimedia chapters to be accredited as permanent observers to WIPO;[195] China's position was supported by a number of other countries, including Russia, Pakistan, Iran, Algeria, Zimbabwe and Venezuela.[196]

Excessive spending and fundraising

In 2014, Jimmy Wales was confronted with allegations that WMF had a poor cost/benefit ratio for "a miserable cost/benefit ratio and for years now has spent millions on software development without producing anything that actually works". He acknowledged that he had "been frustrated as well about the endless controversies about the rollout of inadequate software not developed with sufficient community consultation and without proper incremental rollout to catch show-stopping bugs".[197]

During the 2015 fundraising campaign, some members of the community voiced their concerns about the fundraising banners. They argued that they were obtrusive and could deceive potential donors by giving the impression that Wikipedia had immediate financial problems, which was not true. The Wikimedia Foundation vowed to improve wording on further fundraising campaigns to avoid these issues.[198] Despite this, the Foundation has continued to come under criticism for running campaigns seemingly designed to "make[] its readers feel guilty." Such campaigns have additionally been condemned for, in 2021, being run in countries that had been badly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as in Argentina and Brazil,[199] as well as for sparking fears in India that Wikipedia might be "dying".[200] This is despite the Foundation being in ownership of "vast money reserves", in 2021 reaching its 10-year goal of compiling a $100 million endowment fund in only 5 years.[199]

In February 2017, an op-ed published by The Signpost, the English Wikipedia's online newspaper, titled "Wikipedia has Cancer",[201][202] produced a debate in both the Wikipedian community and the wider public. The author criticized the Wikimedia Foundation for its ever-increasing annual spending, which, he argued, could put the project at financial risk should an unexpected event happen. The author proposed to cap spending, build up the endowment, and restructure the endowment so that WMF cannot dip into the principal when times get bad.[203]

Knowledge Engine project

Main article: Knowledge Engine (search engine)

Knowledge Engine was a search engine project initiated in 2015 by WMF to locate and display verifiable and trustworthy information on the Internet.[204] The KE's goal was to be less reliant on traditional search engines. It was funded with a $250,000 grant from the Knight Foundation.[205] Some perceived the project as a scandal, mainly because it was conceived in secrecy, and the project proposal was even a surprise to some staff, in contrast with a general culture of transparency in the organization and on the projects. Some of the information available to the community was received through leaked documents published by The Signpost in 2016.[206][204] Following this dispute, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Lila Tretikov resigned.[207][208][209]

Social justice causes

In 2022, in a recent "personal appeal" displayed in an advertising banner on Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, one of the founders, emphasized that "Wikipedia is not for sale." This statement highlights the non-profit nature of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), a non-profit organization based in California that owns intellectual property assets, such as the Wikipedia name and branding. However, the WMF does not own or control the global communities that maintain the site.[210]

In the 2022, the WMF announced new recipients for its "knowledge equity grants". As of last June, the WMF reported $239 million in net assets. It is expected to raise $174 million in revenue in the 2023.[210] Despite expenses on the foundation staff's salaries, there's a significant surplus left. To manage these funds, the WMF has created an endowment composed of investments and cash. This is managed not by the WMF but by the Tides Foundation, a charitable organization that channels funds to social justice causes and campaigns.[210]

The endowment aims to grow this capital to $130.4 million in the next fiscal year. Some of these funds are allocated to the knowledge equity fund, which provides grants.[210]

However, there has been some controversy over the administration of the funds. While the Tides Foundation has promised to become a more transparent 501(c)(3) organization to reveal how it manages funds, details on expenses and salaries are still lacking seven years later.[210]

Additionally, the WMF's salary costs have risen from $7 million in 2010/11 to $88 million in 2021/22. Yet, only 2% of the raised money goes towards hosting costs, and the remuneration for the hard-working contributors to Wikipedia remains the same: zero.[210]

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