Today the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia UK  are announcing the release of the final report and recommendations regarding the governance of the Wikimedia UK chapter. The report was completed by Compass Partnership, consultants in non-profit management based in the UK. The report was commissioned jointly by the Foundation and Wikimedia UK in October 2012 following important Wikimedia community discussions about potential conflicts of interest arising from a series of wiki outreach projects.

The Foundation and Wikimedia UK saw the potentially damaging effect of these matters and we ordered this review and report. We both expect the highest standards of governance, and this report is an effort to chart a strong course for Wikimedia UK and also thoughtful and valuable counsel for any organization in our movement to consider.

The report discusses important conclusions based on discussions with and materials provided by all of the major stakeholders. The aim of the report is not to lay blame, rather it seeks to determine if pre-existing policies and practices around conflicts of interest and governance were sufficient. Through this report we also aim to lay the groundwork for better and stronger governance for Wikimedia UK in the future and for its development as a chapter in our movement. We also believe the report may benefit the wider community of Wikimedia affiliated organizations by providing an example of best practices around governance and decision-making as applied to a chapter.

With a clear list of recommendations and timeline for their implementation, Wikimedia UK is now in a position to improve and expand its policies and procedures, related not just to the  management of conflict of interest but also its management structure. The chapter will be discussing the findings with the community and begin their implementation at their forthcoming Trustee meeting in February.

We would like to thank everyone who has supported this process over the past three months, including the authors of the report, Compass Partnership, the staff and trustees of WMUK and the Wikimedia Foundation, and Wikimedia community members who shared their insights and feedback about the whole process.

You can read the review findings here and the chronology of the events here

Questions and answers regarding the report are posted here. A community discussion page on Meta wiki has also been created.

WMF 2011-2012 Annual Report

Today we’re excited to launch the Wikimedia Foundation’s latest Annual Report. This year marks the fifth edition of our Annual Report, which focuses on the achievements and core work of the preceding fiscal year (2011-12), and gives us a chance to recognize the amazing contributions of our volunteers and the generous support of our donors. You can read both the PDF and wiki versions. We welcome your comments on the discussion page.

This year’s report is quite different from our previous efforts. Instead of a multi-page book format, this year we created a folding, vertical brochure (when it’s printed). It’s considerably shorter in terms of text and we hope it will help make for a quicker and more impactful read.

We’re currently in the midst of a translation effort that will result in another 12 language editions to be released in the coming weeks. If you have an account on Meta-Wiki and you’re interested in helping with the review of these translations and other community translation efforts, please sign up. We will be posting this new project for translation shortly.

Our thanks to the many folks who contributed to this annual effort. A particular thank you to David Peters (Exbrook) for his work on the report’s design, and to those photographers and illustrators whose work we featured.

We’re looking forward to another amazing year in the Wikimedia movement!

Jay Walsh, Senior Director, Communications

Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Garner in San Francisco.

We are very excited to share the news that Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner was named to the Worlds 100 Most Powerful Women list by Forbes Magazine yesterday. Citing her role in transforming the Wikimedia Foundation from a small non-profit into a thriving organization with over 120 employees, a complex technical product roadmap and a consistently rising pool of revenue from a global donor-base, Forbes lists Sue in the company of her technology peers, as well as significant political figures, philanthropists, media magnates, leaders of aid organizations and celebrities.

As Forbes writes, the Wikimedia Foundation “pre- and post-Sue Gardner are two completely different organizations. When she arrived at Wikimedia [Foundation], the nonprofit behind Wikipedia, in 2007, the organization had under 10 employees and was raising less than $3 million dollars annually. In 2011, Wikimedia’s number of donors had increased ten times over, raising $23 million.”

Everyone who works at the Wikimedia Foundation is proud that Sue’s leadership and dedication to the Wikimedia movement over the past five years has been recognized so publicly, but as she would remind us, power in the Wikimedia community doesn’t rest in one person. The success of the Wikimedia projects is shared by the hundreds of thousands of contributors from all over the world who have made Wikipedia the 5th largest web property and a household name.

Jay Walsh, Head of Communications

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. Websites that publish facts or deemed to be inappropriate could be blacklisted and blocked from operating in Russia.

Wikimedia Russia blogged (in Russian and English) about the blackout this week.
The volunteers of the Russian Wikipedia undertook this initiative independently from other language projects and from the Wikimedia Foundation, however many in the Wikimedia movement recognize that this legislation is similar to other bills being proposed or passed around the world that could hinder free speech and produce situations where governments could censor information. Non-censorship and freedom of speech are core values of the Wikimedia movement and the Wikimedia Foundation.

The efforts of the Russian Wikipedia blackout on July 10 appear to have made a difference in the ultimate shape of this legislation. Although our projects are not spaces designed for political advocacy, Wikimedians around the world take the issue of freedom of speech in their nations, and especially on our projects, very seriously. Our projects are built on the core values of neutral point of view, non-censorship, and openness, and we continue to urge lawmakers around the world to better understand the role of the free and open web.

The first annual Open Education Week will take place next week from March 5-10, both online and in locally hosted events around the world. Open Education Week is organized by the OpenCourseWare Consortium, which is a community of more than 250 universities and organizations worldwide. Creative Commons, one of the major supporters of OER week, is the organization behind the free copyleft license that helps make Wikipedia a truly free and shareable project.

The purpose of Open Education Week is to raise awareness of the open education movement, which is dedicated to sharing, reducing barriers, and increasing access to education, through free and open access to educational platforms, tools and resources. As OCWC Executive Director Mary Lou Forward said in a press release, “the vision of the open education movement is to create a world in which the desire to learn is fully met by the opportunity to do so.”

As the largest free educational resource on the Internet, Wikipedia in its hundreds of language variants and its sister projects like Wikibooks and Wikiversity, play a central role in the growth and expansion of open education. This week we also salute the thousands of volunteers who have invested enormous amounts of time and energy in the creation of free teaching resources on the Internet.

Events include more than 40 webinars on open education topics, as well as offline events such as local workshops. Throughout the week, there will also be an ongoing discussion via blog posts, tweets, and postings. Anyone can participate in Open Education Week events free of cost. Visit www.openeducationweek.org for more information and event schedules.

Jay Walsh
Head of Communications

Today the Global Journal, a Geneva-based publication focusing on issues facing global businesses, NGOs, and public sector workers announced that the Wikimedia Foundation was at the very top of their list of the 100 best NGOs.

The Journal pointed out that the Foundation is “changing the world with an idea: to create a public space where all people can freely join to collaborate, share and communicate all of our collective knowledge.” The Journal also recognized WMF’s collaborative roots and our movement’s belief that information is a non-profit commodity. Among other global NGOs nominated in the list: Oxfam, International Rescue Committee, Creative Commons, and Habitat for Humanity.

Our thanks to the Global Journal for recognizing the Foundation, but especially for recognizing the work of our 100,000-strong global, volunteer community.

Jay Walsh, Communications

Today (January 15) Wikipedia is celebrating its 11th year on the web. Happy Birthday, Wikipedia! Look who/what else you share your birthday with.

Last year was a big one for Wikipedia, rounding out an incredible decade of growth and impact around the world. Over 450 parties took place across virtually every continent, and the world had an amazing story to tell.

Just a year later and we’ve already seen more milestones achieved and records broken. In 2011 Wikipedia blew well past the 20 million article mark, now pushing towards 21 million articles. Wikimedia Commons, the repository of media files for Wikipedia and its sister projects broke 10 million files in 2011. The global page view from unique visitors count leapt up to and over 400 million, and our individual page requests across all Wikimedia projects broke 16 billion per month (see more of our updated stats here). Access on mobile platforms is skyrocketing, and Wikipedia is currently available in 282 languages.

Our global community of volunteers and chapter organizations are also celebrating. Get-togethers are planned around the globe, including meet-ups, hack-a-thons, a bicycle rally, a kite festival in India, and a picnic in Caracas. It’s not too late to host an event in your own neighborhood.

Here in the United States, and certainly in many other parts of the world, Wikipedia Day is also taking on a new meaning and urgency. The US House of Representatives is reviewing a new piece of legislation, the Stop Online Piracy Act, that – if passed – would hurt the free, open, and secure web. This topic has already been explored on our blog – here and here. Wikimedia Foundation is joining a long list of other web organizations in opposition to SOPA, and today the global community of Wikipedia volunteers is talking about a day of protest here in the US against SOPA. You can join the conversation and voice your thoughts. On January 18 – just a few days after Wikipedia Day, make your views on SOPA known.

Wikipedia was born in a free and open web, and its future and success in all parts of the world is at stake. Let’s make sure our project is as strong and free for Wikipedia Day in 2013 as it is today.

Jay Walsh, Communications

Our annual fundraising campaign reached a successful conclusion today having raised a record-breaking USD 20 million from more than one million donors in nearly every country in the world. It is our most successful campaign ever, continuing an unbroken streak in which donations have risen every year since the campaigns began in 2003.

Wikimedia Foundation websites serve more than 470 million people every month. It is the only major website supported not by advertising, but by donations from readers.

From Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation,

Our model is working fantastically well.

Ordinary people use Wikipedia and they like it, so they chip in some cash so it will continue to thrive. That maintains our independence and lets us focus solely on providing a useful public service. I am so grateful to our donors for making that possible. I promise them we will use their money carefully and well.

The number of Wikimedia Foundation donors has increased ten-fold since 2008 and the total dollar amount raised in the campaign has risen to over $20 million from $4.5 million.

Funds raised in this campaign will be used to buy and install servers and other hardware, to develop new site functionality, expand mobile services, provide legal defense for the projects, and support the large global community of Wikimedia volunteers. The Wikimedia Foundation’s total 2011-12 planned spending is 28.3 million USD. The bulk of that is raised during the annual campaign and the remainder comes throughout the year in the form of grants from institutions (such as the Sloan Foundation) and many other small donations year round.

This year’s campaign highlighted staff and volunteers who help to create Wikipedia. It featured testimonials from volunteer editors in countries such as Argentina, Brazil, India, Kenya, the United Kingdom and the United States ranging in age from 18 to 76, explaining why they edit Wikipedia and why they think readers should support the Wikimedia Foundation. More than 100 volunteers translated the banners and appeals into dozens of languages, reaching hundreds of millions of people.

A special thanks goes to all the contributors who work on the fundraiser year-round, the editors who helped tell their story, the translators who helped spread the message of the fundraiser, Wikimedia foundation employees, and to the readers of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects for their support.

With over 20 million articles in 282 languages, Wikipedia is the largest encyclopedia in human history. Over 100,000 volunteers work on Wikipedia and its 10 sister projects (including projects like Wikimedia Commons, Wikibooks, and Wiktionary), furthering the Wikimedia Foundation’s mission to freely share the sum of all human knowledge. On January 15, 2012, Wikipedia will celebrate its 11th anniversary.

Jay Walsh, Communications

Wikimedia Foundation Annual Report 2010-11

The Wikimedia Foundation is pleased to present the 2010-11 Annual Report, titled ‘the way the world tells its story.’ This year’s report focusses on global celebrations around Wikipedia 10, our emerging work in India, the global education program, our mobile expansion efforts, and on our major engineering/product accomplishments and ambitions.

We center the book around the amazing Arab Spring article, highlighting the inspiring quote from Wael Ghonim ‘Our revolution is like Wikipedia…’

This year we have also prepared six multilingual summary reports, in Japanese, Arabic, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese.

The report is as much a story of the work and activities of our international community as it is a traditional report on the work of WMF through the year. The report is both an update on the activities of the Foundation, and also a wide-ranging review of the work of chapters, volunteers, partners, and individuals around the world. We aim to enlighten the reader with the incredible range of activity and innovation in our movement – to take them beyond the idea that Wikipedia is simply text living on the web and show them a thriving and dynamic community.

As always, we welcome your comments and suggestions. You can add comments along with the community on the meta wiki talk pages.

Many thanks to the report production team: Tilman Bayer, design strategist David Peters, and our story consultant David Weir, and our Communications intern AJ Alexander. Mostly we owe huge thanks to the Wikimedians who made and shared the beautiful imagery in the book by posting it to Commons. This is an ambitious, 100% fueled-by-free-works project. I’d like to think it’s one of the more unique and successful free culture printed works out there – and it wouldn’t be possible without our community.

Thanks and enjoy!

Jay Walsh, Communications