sign in sign up
<<
Home , Florence Devouard, Jimmy Wales, MediaWiki, Nupedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikiquote

Wikimedia

Imagine a world in which every Invented by Ward Cunningham in 1995, wikis are single person is given free access dynamic in which any user can edit a page, to the sum of all human know- quickly and easily, using a . The name ledge. That‘s what we‘re doing. is derived from the Hawaiian word “Wikiwiki”, -- meaning fast. Wikis use a simple formatting lan- Wikimedia is an international non-profit organisa- guage anyone can learn in just a few minutes. For tion dedicated to the development and distribu- example, to italicise text, surround it with two tion of free multilingual content. It hosts various apostrophes; use three for bolded text, and en- free-content projects, most notably , the close a word in two brackets ([[]]) to create a link award-winning online encyclopædia. Other online to another page in the . projects include , a multilingual diction- ary; , a collection of free-content text- books; , a repository of famous quotes; and , a repository for primary-source materials.

The was set up in June 2003 to serve and develop the necessary infrastructure for the constantly growing projects. It owns the Wikimedia servers and covers bandwidth and hosting costs. In Germany, France and Italy, local Wikimedia chapters have been founded to support and promote the projects on a national level. Wiki- media is run mostly by volunteer staff and relies entirely on public donations and grants to meet its goal of providing free knowledge to every person in the world. The software used by the Wikimedia projects is called MediaWiki, and was developed with the goal of creating an encyclopædia. The MediaWiki All contents of the Wikimedia projects are avail- software itself is published under a free licence, the able under a free licence. Everyone is allowed to GNU General Public License (GPL). In addition to copy, distribute, sell, and modify the content, on the Wikimedia projects, MediaWiki has been de- the condition that they credit the author and pre- ployed as a collaborative serve the licence which gives everyone else the tool by international organisations, universities, and same rights. This principle, coming from the free companies. software world, is called “copyleft”. The GNU Free Documentation License ensures that the contents remain free.

Press information, November 2005 page 1 Wikimedia projects Free Documentation License. This means that all of its content can be freely used, freely edited, freely copied, and freely redistributed, subject to the re- Wikipedia strictions of that licence. Wikipedia is founded on the Wikipedia, one of the 50 most popular websites in belief that virtually every- the world (according to alexa.com), is now avail- body has some knowledge able in over 120 languages; in descending order, that they can share with oth- the largest are English, German, French, Japanese, ers. It began as an English- Swedish, Dutch, and Polish. In total, there are more language project on January than 3 million articles, with 700 000 in the English 15, 2001. It was soon joined edition, and 300 000 in German. by a German and French edition, and in a short time • http://www.wikipedia.org. by many other languages. The online encyclopædia is written entirely by volunteers: anyone can create or modify an arti- cle instantly, so that no article has a single author. Instead, hundreds and even thousands of people work together, sharing what they know to edit and Wikimedia Commons was launched improve the content. The result is a never-ending in September 2004, to provide a “work in progress”, always getting more thorough, central repository for free video, im- and always getting better. ages, music, and spoken texts, to be used by all Wikimedia projects. The Wikipedia’s editors come from a wide range of project allows its resources, images backgrounds, students, teachers, enthusiasts in and sound files to be reused across other Wikime- many subjects, each of them contributing a little dia projects. As of June 2005, it has over 150 000 towards helping make this the most well-rounded multimedia files. Wikimedia Commons received an collaborative educational effort ever seen. Wikipe- honorary mention for Digital Community at the dia believes that every single person has the right 2005 Prix Ars Electronica awards in May 2005. to learn, but also that every person has something that they can teach others. • http://commons.wikimedia.org

Contributors can create a personal account with a user name and a password, but this is not re- Wiktionary quired. Some of Wikipedia’s best work comes from anonymous users, many of them just passing Wiktionary is a project to create free content through, who notice a minor flaw that they can dictionaries and thesauri in every tidy up. Many of them become hooked, and end language. The project started in De- up as integral parts of the volunteer community. cember 2002, and is now available Wikipedia’s policy of maintaining a neutral point of in over 50 languages with almost view encourages people from diverse backgrounds 200 000 entries. The largest lan- to work together. guage edition is English, followed by Polish, Bulgar- ian and Dutch. All original material contributed to Wikipedia is considered to be free content under the GNU • http://www.wiktionary.org

Press information, November 2005 page 2 Wikibooks Wikisource Wikibooks aims to build a collection Wikisource, started in November, of free e-book resources, including 2003, aims to build a collection of pri- textbooks, language courses, manuals, mary source texts. It serves Wikime- and annotated books. dia‘s other projects as a useful archive It aims to help both (self-)instruction of classics, laws, and other written of students, and teachers in high-schools and uni- material. versities. The project started in July 2003 and has approximately 5,000 modules of 250 books across • http://www.wikisource.org more than 35 languages.

• http://www.wikibooks.org Wikinews started in December Wikiquote 2004 with the mission to report news on a wide variety of subjects, Wikiquote is a repository of quo- providing a free-content alternative tations taken from famous people, to commercial news; Contributors books, speeches, fi lms or any from around the world collaborate on news arti- intellectually interesting materials. cles. The articles in the currently over 10 language Proverbs, mnemonics or slogans editions are either original reports or summaries are also included in Wikiquote. of news from external sources. All articles are re- quired to be written from a neutral point of view. The project started in July 2003; As of July 2005, it includes nearly 18,000 pages in over 30 languages. • http://www.wikinews.org The largest Wikiquote is in English with over 4,000 pages. The German, French, Polish, Bulgaria and Portuguese editions have each over 1,000 articles.

• http://www.wikiquote.org

Press information, November 2005 page 3 Who is who in Wikimedia? Angela Beesley Angela Beesley is the Execu- Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales tive Secretary of the Wikimedia Foundation, re-elected by the Jimmy “Jimbo“ Donal Wales (born community in July 2005. Angela , 1966), is the founder of was born in Norwich, England, in Wikipedia and the President of 1977 and grew up in Maidstone the Wikimedia Foundation. Wales and Colchester. She holds an hon- was born in Huntsville, Alabama, ours degree in psychology. During a year out from and is a graduate of Auburn Uni- Aston University, and for a period after graduating, versity and the University of Ala- Angela worked as a research assistant in the Aston bama. He worked as Research Director at Dyslexia and Developmental Assessment Centre. Options Associates, a futures and options trading She then worked for the National Foundation for firm then located in Chicago. Educational Research, based in Berkshire, as a de- veloper of the national statutory assessments for In 1999, Wales had the concept of a freely dis- England and Wales. Angela currently lives in Berlin, tributable encyclopædia, and founded a project and manages Wikicities, which she founded with called . It failed primarily due to being a Jimmy Wales in October 2004. top-down “cathedral” model, as opposed to Wiki- pedia, which is the ultimate “bazaar”. After more than 2 years of struggle with the Nupedia concept, Brion Vibber Wikipedia was opened up to all and became an instant success. Brion Vibber is the lead developer and release manager of Mediawiki, Wales is currently the President and Chair of the the used on all the Wikimedia Foundation. He lives in St. Petersburg, Wikimedia projects. He is 26 Florida, with his wife and daughter. years old and lives in , USA. He has been involved as a developer for about 3 years, and has probably poked his finger into every develop- Florence Nibart-Devouard is the ment task, including maintenance of servers, per- Vice-Chair of the Wikimedia Foun- formance improvement, development of features, dation, re-elected by the Wikimedia debugging, and user interface. community in July 2005. Florence was born in Versailles, Paris, and lived in several French cities, as well as Antwerp in ...and more than 50 000 other authors Belgium and Tempe in Arizona. She is an engineer from all over the world in Agronomy (ENSAIA) and also holds a DEA in Genetics and biotechnologies (INPL). She joined You can find them on http://en.wikipedia.org/wik/ the Wikipedia adventure in February 2002 and is Wikipedia:Wikipedians. All logged-in users in the known under the pseudonym “Anthere”. Florence Wikimedia projects have a user page where they is 36, and lives in Clermont Ferrand with her hus- can publish information about themselves. band Bertrand and her two children.

Press information, November 2005 page 4 Awards More information & Contact

Wikipedia On the web • Grimme Online Award 2005 for the German • Wikimedia Foundation Wikipedia http://www.wikimediafoundation.org • Publikumspreis for the • User statistics • Golden Nica for “Digital Communities“ at the http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/Sitemap.htm Prix ars electronica 2004 • Usage per country • Webby Award 2004 for “Best Community“ http://www2.knams.wikimedia.org/country-stats • Web Creation Award 2004 for Japanese Wiki- • Access and traffic statistics pedia http://www2.knams.wikimedia.org/stats • Top 10 reference sites - The UK Daily Mirror, • Media kit (logos and photos) October 2003 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:P ress Press clippings International press contacts Jimmy Wales “Thousands of volunteers [have] written a breath- President, Wikimedia Foundation taking 500,000 articles in 50 languages since Email: [email protected] 2001—all thanks to the defining feature of wikis.“ Phone: (+1)-727-527-9776 (Businessweek, June 2004) Elisabeth Bauer “Wiki sites that work include the impressive Wiki- Press Officer, Wikimedia Foundation pedia, a collaborative encyclopaedia covering every Email: [email protected] topic imaginable. It puts the wiki concept to practi- Phone +49 (0)173-355-8645 cal use, drawing on the combined knowledge and experience of all its contributors to create some- thing informative and authoritative.“ (The Guard- Contacts in France ian, April 1, 2004) Florence Devouard “What is perhaps most fascinating about Wikipe- Vice chair, Wikimedia Foundation dia is its demonstration in practical anarchy. It is an Phone: +33 (0)4-73140069 ever-shifting, voluntary, collaborative enterprise. If Yann Forget it is in the long run successful, it would show that Press contact, Wikimedia France people can make amazing things together without Phone: +33 (0)450-387843 being commanded, constrained, taxed, bribed or punished...if Wikipedia grows into the greatest ref- Email: [email protected] erence work ever made, it will suggest that great things are possible when you merely let people go Contacts in Germany and see what happens.“ (Crispin Sartwell, Los An- Kurt Jansson geles Times. May 4, 2005) Chairman, Wikimedia Germany “One of the most fascinating developments of the Phone: +49 (0)30-610 74 581 Digital Age... extraordinary...” (Dan Gillmor, San Arne Klempert José Mercury News, January 29, 2004) Vice chairman, Wikimedia Germany “It‘s called Wikipedia and, like , it is one of Phone: +49(0)175-93 542 93 the wonders of the world.” (John Naughton, The http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Presse Observer, September 12, 2004) [email protected]

Press information, November 2005 page 5