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Anyone who’s been watching the news will have heard about Wikileaks by now. Wikipedia shares the generic “wiki-” prefix in its name, but there’s no relation. Occasionally even major news sources like the BBC get this wrong, which can lead to serious confusion, even when it’s quickly fixed.

Today the volunteers of the Italian Wikipedia community made the decision to replace all of Italian Wikipedia with a message to readers about a law (PDF in Italian) being discussed before the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian parliament. The message outlines the viewpoints of the Italian Wikipedia community, and provides details about the proposed bill, and….

For the past several days, Wikipedia editors have been discussing whether to stage a protest against the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).  I’ve been asked to give some comments on the bill and explain what effect the proposed legislation might have on a free and open Internet as well as Wikipedia.  My goal in….

I am happy to announce that we have completed the most collaborative, interactive drafting of a proposed terms of use for any major website.   For more than 120 days, the Wikimedia community reviewed, drafted, and redrafted with more than 200 edits modifying the original proposal.  While accumulating 19,000 page views, community members offered comments, edits,….

Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States —the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House….

We never run ads on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is funded by more than a million donors, who give an average donation of less than 30 dollars.

On Tuesday, July 10, the Russian Wikipedia community made a decision to blackout their project for 24 hours to protest a piece of legislation before the Russian Duma. The legislation, which has since been passed (although with important amendments) could threaten the mission of the Wikimedia projects in Russia – to spread free knowledge globally.….

Improving the quality of articles has long been one of the primary aims of contributors to Wikipedia, and is one of the Wikimedia movement’s 2010-15 strategic priorities, but measuring it objectively has remained a challenge

Ten years ago today, on June 20, 2003, Jimmy Wales announced the founding of the Wikimedia Foundation. He entrusted the new nonprofit with the operation of Wikipedia, launched two and a half years prior.

A few weeks ago, the Wikimedia Foundation’s legal team published a blog post about the PRISM surveillance program. In particular, we made clear that the Foundation does not participate in PRISM, and that we wanted Wikimedia community feedback on what next steps you felt we should take. This post is an update for the broader….