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Imagine a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing. And we need your help.
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The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an international non-profit organization dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to providing the full content of these wiki-based projects to the public free of charge. The Wikimedia Foundation operates some of the largest collaboratively-edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, one of the 25 most visited websites.
The Foundation mostly relies on support from individuals. Please consider making a donation today, be it time, money or hardware. Benefactors's page is dedicated to some of the larger donations made by companies and individuals which are helping to sustain the projects of Wikimedia. The Wikimedia Foundation does not necessarily endorse the activities of its Corporate Benefactors.
The Wikimedia Foundation has 501(c)(3) tax exempt status in the United States. Donations made from other nations may also be tax deductible. See deductibility of donations for details. Please see our fundraising page for details of making donations via PayPal, MoneyBookers or by postal mail. For all other types of donation, please contact the Wikimedia Board at board at wikimedia.org.
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From the board
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Letters from the Founder and Board of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Quarterly reports
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Regular reports on various aspects of the Foundation, written by officers, employees and active members of the Foundation.
From the projects
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This is a free area, with reports by various people on various issues :-) For example, a report on Wikinews, or Wikicommons; a text on a new arbitration committee, a wikijunior publication, a new grassroots initiative to develop a project, etc. Please feel free to add participate and add reports yourself, by following the link above.
Features
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Meetups
A growing number of conferences were attended by Wikimedians this quarter, both as speakers and as booth-tenders. However, the most visible event of the last months was nevertheless the Wikimania conference, the first international Wikimedia conference, held in August 2005. The next Wikimania city has now been chosen and will be ... Boston !
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Interviews
The Quarto caught up with the father of the wiki movement before breakfast on an early Oregon morning, while he was recovering from the recent Pattern Languages of Programs (PLoP) conference held in Illinois. In between cans of Moxie, we picked his brain about the evolution of wiki, copyright, and the Wikipedia community. Afterward, he came onto IRC to hang out in #wikipedia for a while, where he was duly lauded. See our interview with Ward Cunningham.
The Quarto also tracked down Lawrence Lessig, Stanford law professor, founder and chairman of Creative Commons, and free culturesmith, in a lull at the end of a long December day. In a whirlwind session, he talked to us about copyright, copyleft, barriers to free culture, legal pitfalls for Wikipedia, and fighting the good fight. read more. |
Latest news
Mediawiki software: the mythical Universal Login soon a reality
Brion, our head developer, visited Berlin to drop in on the 22C3 conference and get some face-to-face chatting done with some of our European folks (such as Magnus and JeLuf). He posted a report about that on Meta. (Anthere, 02 January 2006)
Directmedia's next edition of German Wikipedia content
Directmedia's next edition of German Wikipedia content was issued in December 2005. A 139 page book explaining Wikipedia, its history and policies was accompanied by a 7.5 GB DVD containing 300,000 articles and 100,000 images. The book with DVD is sold for 9.90 Euro; both are also available for free download. Read more...(Anthere, 30 December 2005)
Nature compares Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica
Science magazine Nature asked expert reviewers from varied disciplines to review 50 articles in each encyclopedia. The study found that "Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries." read more... (elian, 15 December 2005)
Wikipedia wins two Awards in Italy
At the Premio WWW event of the Italian business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore Wikipedia was honored as "best website" in the category Education and Work. The free encyclopedia also received a special award from Il Sole 24 Ore in cooperation with the Italian ministry of Technology and Innovation. (elian, 14 December 2005)
Wikimedia Foundation supporting non-profit medical research....
The Wikimedia Foundation is supporting non-profit medical research by participating in the Folding@Home program, donating computer-time on servers when these do not have any other work to do.
A meeting of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees was held on irc on November 13, 2005
Notes may be found at Meetings/November 13, 2005. (Florence Devouard, 27 November 2005)
The Wikimedia Foundation is honored by a World Technology Award in Communications Technology
This week, the Wikimedia Foundation was honored by a World Technology Award in communication, joining the ranks of other World Technology Network members. See http://www.wtn.net/2005/summit/ (Florence Devouard, 15 November 2005)
Wikimania 2006 will take place in Boston, USA
After a very tight vote (5 to 4 and 1 abstention), Boston has been chosen to host Wikimania 2006, the second International Wikimedia Conference. All information about the location can be found on this page. We wish to thank all participants for the work they have put into their bids, and especially the supporters of Toronto whose city made it to the shortlist. Definite dates and agenda to be confirmed shortly. (Delphine Ménard, 22 October 2005)
Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to Form New Partnership
1-Click Answers, Wikipedia Edition software will be linked from the English Wikipedia Tools page. Please see the press release and discussion for more information. (Florence Devouard, 20 October 2005)
Vote over the creation of a new project: Wikiversity
The Wikiversity project, which currently resides on Wikibooks, has started a vote to move to wikiversity.org, which currently hosts a near-dormant German Wikiversity project. The vote will last until November 1. Wikimedia Foundation board of Trustee will have the final decision over the creation of that new project after the community gave its opinion (a two-thirds majority and board approval is required to start a project beta period). The potential project was presented at the Floss Workshop in september by Florence Devouard. (User:Anthere)
Read the latest Wikimedia Foundation newsletter:The Wikimedia Quarto, or see current events for more information.
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Corporate details
The Wikimedia 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 Foundation bylaws may be seen at Wikimedia Foundation bylaws.
The Foundation manages the Budget, which pays primarily for computer equipment and hosting. Other costs include human resources necessary to the running of the Wikimedia projects, though most people are volunteers. This site includes a complete list of notes from Board meetings.
Privacy policy : If you browse the Wikimedia project websites, we gather no more information than is typically collected in server logs. If you contribute to the Wikimedia projects, you are publishing every word you post publicly. You should assume that anything you write will be retained forever. This includes articles, user pages and talk pages.
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