Archive:Press releases/Relocation
Wikipedia to Relocate to San Francisco
ST. PETERSBURG, FL, October 9, 2007 - The Wikimedia Foundation, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, announced today that it will be relocating its headquarters from St. Petersburg, FL to San Francisco, CA. The move will take place this winter.
"San Francisco is the center of high-tech in the United States, and will give the Foundation access to a rich array of resources, including best-in-breed online talent, top-tier universities, world-class support services and major media," said Florence Devouard, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees chair. "We are all very excited about the move, and I know the Wikimedia Foundation will flourish in the Bay Area."
After almost a year of careful deliberation, the Board of Trustees determined that, out of six candidate cities, San Francisco would provide the Wikimedia Foundation with an ideal base from which to grow. Its proximity to Asia in particular is expected to enable the Foundation to form closer ties with volunteers and potential partners in that part of the world. This is a key goal for the Foundation, which aims to provide information to people everywhere in the world.
"I am thrilled that the Wikimedia Foundation has chosen to relocate its headquarters to San Francisco," said San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. "Wikimedia will be an illustrious addition to our thriving information technology hub. They represent the cutting edge of Internet-based innovation and will contribute greatly to the atmosphere of creativity that flourishes in San Francisco, " Mayor Newsom continued.
The Wikimedia Foundation's last day in St. Petersburg will be January 31, 2008. While the office is currently staffed by six full time employees, that number is expected to rise in the next two years. Hiring for the new headquarters will begin in a few weeks.
The Wikimedia Foundation was created on June 20, 2003 by Jimmy Wales. It is the parent organization of numerous free-content projects, including the popular Wikipedia website, one of the world's ten-most-visited sites. Additionally, the Foundation oversees many programs that encourage the growth, development and distribution of free educational content worldwide. As a nonprofit, it is supported almost entirely by small donations from private individuals, and operates mostly with volunteer staff.
For more information, please contact Sandra Ordonez at (727) 231-0101 or email her at sordonez@wikimedia.org
About Wikipedia
The goal of the Wikipedia project is to create free encyclopedias in all languages of the world. Anyone with Internet access is free to contribute by writing new articles and editing existing articles.
Wikipedia started in January 2001, and currently offers more than eight million articles in 250 languages. The largest Wikipedia is in English, with more than two million articles; it's followed by the German and French editions, each of which contain more than half a million articles. Nine other language editions contain 100,000+ articles, and more than 100 other languages contain 1,000+ articles. Every month, new language editions launch.
Wikipedia is entirely created and maintained by a community of active volunteers. In 2004, Wikipedia won the Webby Award for "Community" and the Prix Ars Electronica's Golden Nica for "Digital Communities." Since the start of the project, more than 100,000 registered users have made at least ten edits each, and more than 3.4 million people have created accounts on the English Wikipedia alone.
About the Wikimedia Foundation
The Wikimedia Foundation Inc. is a nonprofit charitable 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. It operates some of the largest collaboratively-edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, one of the world's 10 most-visited websites. The Foundation was created in 2003 by Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia.
Today, the Wikimedia Foundation operates the following projects:
Wikipedia, a project to build free encyclopedias in all languages of the world. Wiktionary, a project to create free content dictionaries and thesauri in every language. Wikiquote, a repository of quotations taken from famous people, books, speeches, films or any intellectually interesting materials. Wikibooks, which aims to build a collection of free e-book resources, including textbooks, language courses, manuals, and annotated public domain books. Wikisource, a collection of classic books, laws, and other free works. Wikispecies , a central, extensive species database for taxonomy. Wikinews, with the mission to report the news on a wide variety of subjects. Wikiversity, a project dedicated to learning materials and learning communities. Wikimedia Commons, a central repository for free video, images, music, spoken texts, and other free media that can be easily reused by all Wikimedia projects.
All projects of the Wikimedia Foundation are collaboratively developed by volunteers using the MediaWiki software. All contributions are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (except in Wikinews, which is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5). This means their content may be freely used, freely edited, freely copied and freely redistributed subject to the restrictions of that license.