Welcome to Wikipedia! Here’s what we’re doing to help you stick around
Someone signing up to edit a Wikipedia page for the first time may feel a bit like a visitor to a new planet—excited, to be sure, but wildly overwhelmed. Many new editors must wonder: Just how many millions of articles are in this vast online resource? And which of those millions of articles need that….
Amazon to help advance free knowledge for all with new $1 million gift to the Wikimedia Endowment
We are pleased to announce a new $1 million gift to the Wikimedia Endowment from Amazon to support greater access to information for everyone. This is Amazon’s second gift to the Wikimedia Endowment, a permanent fund dedicated to ensuring the long-term sustainability of Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia free knowledge projects. When Wikipedia was created….
Who are the organizers that grow Wikimedia’s communities? New research on actors that bring energy to the Wikimedia movement
The face of Wikipedia’s volunteer community is often an editor—someone who maintains, edits, and writes facts in the vast online encyclopedia. But editors aren’t the only contributors to Wikipedia, WikiCommons, and the other Wikimedia projects: there are many other volunteers who contribute by organizing events and inspiring others to join our volunteer community. Their work,….
Wikimedia Foundation welcomes Amanda Keton as General Counsel
The Wikimedia Foundation is excited to announce the appointment of Amanda Keton as General Counsel. Amanda brings more than a decade of legal, nonprofit management, and compliance experience to the role. She will join the organization on 7 October. The Wikimedia Foundation is the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia and other free knowledge projects. Together,….
Wikimedia Foundation diversity and inclusion information about our workers—2019 by the numbers
Wikipedia and the Wikimedia projects form the largest collaborative collection of free knowledge – written in roughly 300 languages, and built by and for the world. At the Wikimedia Foundation, the U.S.-based nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia, we strive to reflect the communities we currently work with, and those we hope to work with in….
What we learned about closing Wikipedia’s gender gap using a classroom assignment
Assigning Wikipedia as a classroom assignment is a difficult proposition. The idea of integrating the encyclopedia into a curriculum has been stigmatized for many years, and it can be complicated to ensure that students’ work fits into Wikipedia’s extensive policies and guidelines. Over the last decade, however, a brave cadre of professors and teachers have….
Thanks for the thanks! Examining the efficacy of Wikipedia’s thanks feature
Much like Asgard, Wikipedia is not a place but a people. Specifically, an extensive community of volunteers from around the world who donate their time each day to building, curating, and watching over the largest collection of knowledge ever assembled. Unlike Asgard, the people who contribute to Wikipedia often only rarely meet outside of the….
Do Europeans have a right to be globally delisted? The Court of Justice of the European Union says no.
Update (May 6, 2020): In 2016, the Wikimedia Foundation intervened in support of Google’s efforts to define the scope of the “right to be forgotten” in France. Faced with an order from the French data protection authority (“CNIL”) to delist information worldwide in response to a right to be forgotten request, Google challenged the order….
Content translation tool helps create over half a million Wikipedia articles
In science fiction, the Encyclopedia Galactica is a compendium of a galaxy’s worth of knowledge. Wikipedia isn’t quite there yet—for one, we’ve barely left Earth. However, that doesn’t mean we aren’t trying to put together a planet’s worth of knowledge and ensure that all of its inhabitants can learn from it in their own languages.….
How the Wikimedia Foundation is making efforts to go green
Update: The Wikimedia Foundation’s most recent sustainability assessment from 2019 was published on 13 August, 2020. Learn more here. We at the Wikimedia Foundation strive to ensure that our work and mission support a sustainable world. Today, we are releasing a sustainability assessment that chronicles the total carbon footprint of the Foundation’s work and commits….
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